European courts brought more bad news to Google’s recent reign of error as Switzerland’s top Court ruled that Google’s Street View mapping service violated the privacy of its citizens forcing Google to blur faces and license plate numbers before putting images on the Internet. The Swiss Court stated, “the interest of the public in having a visual record and the commercial interests of the defendants in no way outweighs the rights over one’s own image.” Switzerland joins the United Kingdom, Spain and France all of whom have found that Google violated various privacy laws.

Lately, the United States has gotten into the act.  Last year, the Federal Communications Commission opened an investigation after the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint asking the Commission to investigate violations of federal wiretap law and the U.S. Communications Act. Now, the FTC has launched an anti-trust probe into Google and the Senate will be holding hearings on privacy and Google’s anti-competitiveness nature when Congress returns in September.  But authorities have only begun to scratch the surface of issues relating to whether Google has lived up to its mantra of “Do No Evil.”

One thing is clear–Google’s position on privacy turns America’s long-standing view of the Constitution on its head.

In December 2009, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared about privacy concerns: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

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From AFP:

An upcoming book about Google claims that Eric Schmidt, who is to step down next week as chief executive, once asked for information about a political donation he made to be removed from the Internet giant’s search engine, The New York Times reported Friday.

The Times said Schmidt’s request is recounted in “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives,” a book by technology journalist Steven Levy which is to appear in stores on April 12.

The Times said Levy spent three years reporting inside the company to write the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Times.

According to the book, Schmidt’s request was rejected as unacceptable by Sheryl Sandberg, who served as Google’s vice president of global online sales and operations for six years before leaving in March 2008 for Facebook.

Google announced in January that Schmidt would be replaced as chief executive on April 4 by Google co-founder Larry Page.

Read the whole thing here. This goes to the heart of something that’s been a bit of a nagging concern for civil libertarians. Namely, that Google could or would somehow “game” their search engine results for its own ends. According to this account, the company denied the request, but that its CEO would even think of it is cause for concern.

Boy, them Googlers Act Fast.

Climate ’skeptic’ website ICECAP posted this item noting Google’s latest gambit in global warming activism, which includes bringing on board as an advisor an academic whose name and address pop up with some frequency in the ClimateGate emails.

Apparently in response, Google has flagged ICECAP’s website with this warning, discouraging traffic:

“This site may be compromised.“

ICECAP host Joe D’Aleo, the first meteorologist at the Weather Channel before that operation sold out to the alarmist industry, brought this to my attention and assures me this warning was not the case until now. He also attests that the site is not compromised. We just have a co-incidence of challenge followed by inaccuracy, is all.

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In the ongoing fight over proposed rules that would institute net neutrality, a major proponent of the policy is taking fresh heat from critics.  Google, arguably the world’s biggest name in tech, a major source of campaign donations to President Barack Obama, and one of the most prominent advocates of an “open internet,” is taking heat for alleged hypocrisy and rent seeking.

The criticism comes as the company continues to advocate for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to impose net neutrality rules that would target internet service providers (ISPs) while opposing so-called “search neutrality” that would impact both the company and its revenues in a manner that observers of the debate say could be particularly adverse to Google.

Last week, in a post on the official Google blog, the company’s senior vice president for product management, Jonathan Rosenberg, wrote that while Google’s “goal is to keep the Internet open,” it opposes the concept of “openness” where it would apply to its own search and ad products.

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