NLPC Calls for Strengthened Data Privacy Protections from Google at Annual Meeting
NLPC Calls for Strengthened Data Privacy Protections from Google at Annual Meeting
Publish Date: 2026-06-05 12:15:00
Source Domain: nlpc.org
NLPC presented a “Report on AI Data Usage Oversight” shareholder proposal today at the annual meeting of Alphabet Inc., parent of Google and YouTube, that requested the Company to increase its reporting of the risks of “unethical or improper usage of external data in the development and training of its artificial intelligence offerings” and to disclose what safeguards the Company has in place.
The company’s board of directors opposed our proposal, as explained on page 96 of its proxy statement. NLPC responded to the board’s opposition statement in an exempt solicitation report circulated to the company’s shareholders.
Presenting the proposal at the meeting was Paul Chesser, director of NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. An audio recording of his presentation can be found here, and a transcript of his three-minute remarks follows:
Proposal Number 14 asks one thing of Alphabet: publish an annual report on the risks of unethical or improper external data use in its AI offerings.
The Board refuses, saying things like internal governance systems; opt-out controls; and trade-association memberships should be sufficient.
That answer might have been defensible once.
It isn’t anymore.
Over the past twelve months, Alphabet has paid roughly $1.9 billion dollars to settle privacy claims, including the largest single-state privacy settlement in the Company’s history; a federal jury verdict for tracking nearly a hundred million smartphone users who had turned tracking off; and a separate settlement over Google Assistant recording private conversations.
Every dollar of that post-dates the governance systems the Board now asks you to trust.
And the risks are no longer confined to data going in.
They are now on the AI side, going out.
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