Just when you taught things were getting a little shaky for world-renowned Swiss privacy, Bern’s government reminds everyone that it’s not that easy to lay hands on the country’s most valuable asset.
After recent settlements between the US, Switzerland and UBS to disclose Irs cheaters, Bern backfires on Google. Well, it’s not really backfire, it’s more about reminding who is in charge for Swiss privacy on Swiss soil, i.e. the Swiss government.
Switzerland has recently signed an agreement with the US government to disclose about 4.500 names of American citizens UBS account holders because of tax evasion charges.
It is important to understand that this is an agreement, meaning that when the most powerful and pushy government in the world attacked the Swiss banking system, Switzerland was nevertheless able to answer back to America.
So some names will be disclosed but strictly after Bern analyzes the paperwork that proves these US citizens with Swiss bank accounts guilty as charged.
But there was no settlement when Google’s Swiss mapping service failed to obscure faces and plates properly yesterday. After the Swiss Street View was released on-line, Hanspeter Thur, from the federal bureau of data protection, required the Mountain View-based giant to stop the service immediately as Swiss privacy laws have not been respected.
The reason was that Google failed to warn citizens about the Google Car transit dates and time and, worst of all, failed to obscure people’s faces and car’s plates.
This has nothing to do with the service’s ban, it is all about respecting local privacy laws and regulations.
One of the biggest scandals was that the face of a Swiss Government’s member was actually photographed while walking around town with his assistant.
Google acted surprised by Switzerland’s reaction, even though it had to admit that the obscuration software is still failing to do its job once in a wile.
While engineers work on getting that one fixed, Switzerland decided it is better to shield its citizens and visitors from Big brother’s indiscrete eye.
