Google sues US government for favoring Microsoft for e-mail contract News
Google sues US government for favoring Microsoft for e-mail contract
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[JURIST] Google [corporate website; JURIST news archive] has filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Interior (DOI) [official website] alleging that the DOI arbitrarily decided only to allow Microsoft [corporate website] to compete for a contract to overhaul its e-mail system. According to the lawsuit, filed Friday in the US Court of Federal Claims [official website], the DOI decided in August to limit bidders [FT report] to only those using programs based on Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Google was allegedly excluded because of security concerns [BBC report], but the company says it has created a special application, Google Government Apps, that addresses all of these concerns. Furthermore, the company argues its application would save US taxpayers millions of dollars.

Over the past year, Google’s privacy practices and policies have the focus of a number of investigations and complaints. Last week, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) [official website] announced that it had ended an inquiry [JURIST report] into Google’s internal policies and procedures that led to the company inadvertently collecting data on unsecured wireless networks while photographing streetscapes for its Street View maps program. In October, Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart announced that Google was in violation [JURIST report] of the country’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act [text, PDF] (PIPEDA). In August, the South Korean National Police Agency (SKNPA) [official website, in Korean] raided the Google South Korean headquarters [JURIST report] in connection with accusations that the company had been illegally acquiring user data. In July, the Australian Privacy Commissioner announced [JURIST report] that its investigation revealed Google’s actions violated the Australia Privacy Act [government backgrounder].

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.