EU asks Google to explain its data privacy policies

In the latest example of a U.S. technology giant potentially being called on the carpet in Europe, Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing data on its users for up to two years, according to a report in the International Herold Tribune.  An advisory panel of data protection chiefs from the 27 EU countries sent a letter last week to the Internet search engine company asking Google to justify its policy of retaining data on Internet addresses and individual search habits, said Friso Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for European Union’s justice commissioner, Franco Frattini.  Privacy experts said the letter was the first salvo in what could become a determined effort by the European Commission to force Google to change how it does business in the EU, whose 400 million consumers outnumber the United States.   Any EU effort to impose limits on Google, which as a U.S.-based company operates under U.S. law, would be the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive actions taken by European policy makers to rein in global technology companies.