By Daniel J. Solove and Neil Richards
The recent case of Google v. Vidal-Hall in the UK has generated quite a buzz, with Omer Tene calling it the “European privacy judicial decision of a decade.”
The case illustrates several fascinating aspects of the developing global law of privacy, with big implications for online marketing, Big Data, and the Internet of Things.
At first blush, it is easy to see the case as one more divergence between how privacy is protected in the EU and US, with a European Court once again showing how much eager it is to protect privacy than an American one. But the biggest takeaway from the case is not one of divergence; it is one of convergence!
The Vidal-Hall case involved the notorious “Safari Workaround” that made the news a couple of years ago when it was discovered that Google had used cookies to track people surfing the web using Apple’s popular Safari browser. Such tracking was done without the consent of the users and contrary to promises Google had made in its privacy policy. The English Court ruled that this activity was unlawful under English privacy law. Specifically, it found that Google had violated both the English Data Protection Act and committed the tort of “misuse of private information.”