Google said that it had made mistakes during the Senate hearing on privacy

Google is ready to testify that it has "made mistakes" but has learned from the past and has improved its privacy safeguards at a Senate privacy committee hearing today. hui.

Leaders from Twitter, Apple, Amazon, AT & T and Charter Communications are also ready to testify. The hearing is convened by Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The committee will examine how giant technology companies manage user data and review the privacy policies of these companies.

The hearing is partly inspired by the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in May. Although it is not as far as the GDPR, California's new privacy law also comes into effect in 2020, prompting the Internet Association, which represents dozens of technology companies, to call for new rules.

In this context, Keith Enright, Google's privacy officer, will testify that Google has admitted to "making mistakes" in the past, according to a written testimony released by the company. He added that Google has learned from its mistakes and "improved our robust privacy program".

It seemed to need improvement. In 2011, the company settled a deal with the Federal Trade Commission and accepted 20 years of confidentiality audits after the government sued for violating user privacy with its new Google Buzz social network . A year later, he agreed to pay a $ 22.5 million fine for distorting his privacy practices with Apple Safari users.

Last July, the European Union imposed a staggering $ 5 billion on Google for violating antitrust laws. This is of course different from a privacy breach, but it indicates a company that usually has to write its own rules. Then, in August, the Associated Press revealed that Google was tracking the locations of Android users and shared this information with certain apps, even when users had specifically ended the whereabouts. (Gary Eastwood, of TheNextWeb, tested it by turning off his location and heading to a Walmart – indeed, he received a promotion from this Walmart moments after he left.)

According to Reuters, the representative of Amazon plans to argue that complying with GDPR has taken resources to "invent new features for our customers". The Twitter representative, meanwhile, will ask for a "robust privacy protection framework" that protects the rights of users without crippling innovation.

Twitter's position is unusual – in general, tech companies have sought to avoid privacy laws, preferring to be self-regulating. But now that the GDPR and the California Privacy Act are laws, they may think they have an interest in influencing a new national law rather than being subject to different rules in each state.

And, at least in the beginning, Congress seems to be inclined to adopt such a law. Thune wrote in The Hill: "The question is no longer whether we need a national law to protect the privacy of consumers.The question is what form this law should take."

Will Congress really pass a law that protects the privacy of users? And how would such a law affect both users and advertisers – many of them being small businesses – who rely on companies like Google and Amazon to target their target customers? It will be necessary to wait to know it.