GigaOM Pro

The recent battle over anti-piracy legislation involved complex and far-reaching legal issues, but at least it was fought more or less along a single front. In contrast, the brewing battle over data privacy is erupting on multiple fronts at once. Last week, several U.S. lawmakers sent a series of pointed questions to Google over the company’s recent update of its privacy policy. Yesterday, Google responded with a letter of its own to Congress, along with a blog post, that serve mostly to highlight how complex and multifaceted the entire issue of data privacy is. At the same time, Rep. Ed Markey is circulating a draft of the Mobile Device Privacy Act that would shift the focus of the privacy debate from online services to the devices used to access them. Meanwhile, the U.S. government itself is obviously doing some pretty intrusive monitoring online communication itself, as a pair of Brits recently discovered when they found themselves barred from entering the U.S. after a couple of cheeky tweets were picked up by the Department of Homeland Security. How’s that for protecting your privacy?