I agree that the changes are covered, but I disagree that they are covered well.
The following companies have gone from at least one star below Google to at least one star above Google, on a 4-6 star rating system, in the last year:
Adobe, LinkedIn, Wickr, Wikimedia, Wordpress.
despite no company materially changing their terms in that time.
How is this a robust or meaningful measure, in that case? The exceptionally large variation is not addressed.
Why has this happened? In my opinion, it's because the 2014 report is bogus (two of the categories are "published a report"), and most probably it was just permitted to be bogus because Google were heavily funding the EFF in 2014.
Three of the stars last year -- "requires a warrant", "publishes transparency reports", and "publishes law enforcement guidelines" -- were merged into a single star "follows industry best practices". According to the report, a company has to do all three of those things to qualify.
It's perfectly reasonable for the EFF to evolve how they're rating companies as the years go on. After all, the privacy landscape changes and they're trying to push companies to making some changes. That explains the drop in stars. According to the EFF, Google is doing things that are now considered standard, and they're no longer on the forefront of defending privacy.
Your accusations of bias because Google isn't funding the EFF are, frankly, ridiculous.
If that were the only major difference, Google would still have 4 stars with the 5th undecided. Google now have 3 stars.
>Your accusations of bias because Google isn't funding the EFF are, frankly, ridiculous.
To be clear, I am not accusing EFF of bias against Google.
Other privacy organisations have literally accused the EFF of lobbying for Google. From Wikipedia:
"In 2011, the EFF received $1 million from Google as part of a settlement of a class action related to privacy issues involving Google Buzz. EPIC and seven other privacy-focused nonprofits protested that that the plaintiffs lawyers and Google had, in effect, arranged to give the majority of those funds "to organizations that are currently paid by Google to lobby for or to consult for the company.""
Since then, the EFF spoke up loudly against the right to be forgotten (Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González), even though this is considered a privacy basic by EU data protection principles.
> despite no company materially changing their terms in that time
Yes, because, again, the test criteria themselves changed.
I'd suggest your focus on a two-data-point trend and google (at the exclusion of every other company on this list) may just be revealing your own bias rather than the EFF's.
> it's because the 2014 report is bogus (two of the categories are "published a report")
again, I'd suggest actually reading the report. Several of the categories this year also only require a single line in a privacy policy. That's all this report has ever been -- some disclosures, but in many cases, just flat out statements that something will be done with no actual verification that it will be (since in many cases that's not conclusively possible).
Thanks in advance for being more civil in the future. It's important, and we appreciate it.
> Can you clarify why my comment was rebuked, but the parent was not, please?
I simply didn't see that bit. You're right that it broke the guidelines as well. Had I seen it I would have said so.
Still, accusing a fellow user of shilling is worse than accusing one of not having read an article. The shilling thing is its own circle of forum hell. I've written about it, if anyone wants to understand why we single this out: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR....
The following companies have gone from at least one star below Google to at least one star above Google, on a 4-6 star rating system, in the last year: Adobe, LinkedIn, Wickr, Wikimedia, Wordpress.
despite no company materially changing their terms in that time.
How is this a robust or meaningful measure, in that case? The exceptionally large variation is not addressed.
Why has this happened? In my opinion, it's because the 2014 report is bogus (two of the categories are "published a report"), and most probably it was just permitted to be bogus because Google were heavily funding the EFF in 2014.