Google has been accused of sending the data on American citizens to China, in a new complaint by privacy groups to the US Federal Trade Commission (FT

Privacy groups accuse Google of leaking data to China

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2025-01-20 13:30:05

Google has been accused of sending the data on American citizens to China, in a new complaint by privacy groups to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The complaint, brought by Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic), is the first to be brought under the US’s new data-security laws, and takes aim at Google’s real-time bidding system for online advertising.

The groups have urged the commission to investigate Google’s real-time bidding data, claiming the company is sending large quantities of sensitive data about Americans to China and other foreign adversaries.

Filed under the new Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, the complaint alleges that Google has known for a decade that the technology broadcasts sensitive data without any security, and that chief executive Sundar Pichai allegedly failed to act on in-house calls to reform the system, citing internal Google communications.

It said the system collects personally identifiable sensitive data about people in the United States from other businesses, potentially revealing their employment with the military and intelligence community, locations, political views, sexuality, ethnicity and online behaviour. That data could be accessible to foreign adversary countries, both directly and indirectly, the complaint alleges.