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Grassley: Google Must Explain Why It Failed to Disclose Data Vulnerability to Congress, Public

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judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/rele…

Google was aware of glitch when it refused to attend hearing on data protection

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called on Google to explain what steps it is taking to protect the personal information of its platform users...

following revelations that glitches exposing personal information on the social platform Google+ went unaddressed for three years.

In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Grassley noted that, according to news reports, Google was aware of the glitch in March.

Around that same time, Grassley invited representatives from Google and Twitter to join Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an April 10 hearing on consumer data privacy on social media platforms.

Google declined to participate, claiming that it didn’t have the same data privacy issues as Facebook. Google later provided information on how users and third party developers can control and access data.

“Despite your contention that Google did not have the same data protection failures as Facebook, it appears from recent reports that Google+ had an almost identical feature to Facebook,

which allowed third party developers to access information from users as well as private information of those users’ connections.

Moreover, it appears that you were aware of this issue at the time I invited you to participate in the hearing and sent you the letter regarding Google’s policies,” Grassley wrote.

In the letter, Grassley requested details on actions Google has taken to ensure that user data was not improperly used by or transferred to third parties.

In addition, Grassley asked why it took so long for Google to identify the glitch and why the company chose not to disclose it to users or Congress.

Full text of Grassley’s letter to Google follows:
judiciary.senate.gov/download/2018-…