Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that Twitter has changed its terms of service to prevent users from sharing their data and receive limits on how long that data can be stored for.
The change followed the company’s CEO, Jack Dorsey’s decision to suspend his personal account in light of ongoing criticism from privacy advocates. Yesterday, CNBC reported that in a statement given during the suspension, Dorsey had said “I want my voice back.”
Soon after the suspension- deciding to take action as suggested by privacy activists like Max Schrems – regulators and EU Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli tweeted about his concern for all users’ rights after the changes were announced.
In response, Buttarelli’s office wrote back to the Commission’s information and justice commissioner, Věra Jourová. And in this letter, they ask questions about the current law and the newly implemented new rules.
The first question: How does Twitter maintain its users’ data privacy? The letter notes that, “privacy is not a feature of your service but a fundamental right to which every user has an entitlement.”
The second question: Does Twitter have human oversight for processing users’ data? It seems that the company has recently updated its privacy policy, which outlines how the company collects and processes user data. But the question is whether it has proper policies to ensure it respects European privacy rights.
The letter then goes on to ask how the new policies will affect non-users. Will they be affected by the new policy? Will Twitter continue to collect their data? The article then points out that, “the appointment of a lead data protection authority for Twitter is still remains pending.”
And lastly, the letter asks what mechanisms does Twitter have in place to ensure that it complies with laws such as Regulation 95/46/EC .
It is clear from this letter that Twitter has a long way to go before it can be viewed as safeguarding user privacy rights.
