The Article 29 Working Party has asked Google to halt the introduction of its new private policy, saying it needs to investigate whether the proposals sufficiently protect user data, Reuters reported. The Article 29 Working Party is an independent body that brings together data protection regulators from each of the EU's 27 countries. The European Commission said it also needs to examine Google's plans more thoroughly before the search group's policy comes into effect on 1 March. The regulators are concerned that Google may share personal data across all of its platforms without asking for prior consent. Google announced in January that it was simplifying its privacy regulations, consolidating 60 guidelines into a single policy that will function across all its services, including YouTube, Gmail and social networking site Google+. "Given the wide range of services you offer, and the popularity of these services, changes in your privacy policy may affect many citizens in most or all of the EU member states," Article 29 Working Party wrote to Google CEO Larry Page. Viviane Reding, the European commissioner in charge of data protection, welcomed the move. "The Commission therefore calls on Europe's data protection authorities to ensure that EU law is fully complied with in Google's new privacy policy," she said in a statement. Lawmakers and civil liberties groups in the US are also concerned by Google's plans to include photos and posts from users' Google+ accounts in search results. Google said the concerns raised by European regulators were a surprise as the company had briefed members of the working party in the weeks leading up to the announcement.
