Google-Facebook Privacy-Probe Tactics Criticized in Germany

Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. were criticized by German data protection regulators for “delay tactics” and “impertinent” behavior when responding to probes into their privacy policies.

Experience has shown that “Google will keep making attempts to delay investigations through continuous correspondence and always freshly packaged arguments,” Peter Schaar, Germany’s federal data protection commissioner, said in a report yesterday. Facebook was separately described earlier this month as having “impertinent” behavior by Thilo Weichert, the privacy regulator for the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.