Judge dismisses lawsuit over Google privacy changes

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that sought to force the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to block Google's planned privacy changes. 

EPIC argued that Google's privacy changes, scheduled to go into effect March 1, would violate a settlement the Web company reached with the FTC last year. 

But in her decision, Judge Amy Berman Jackson concluded that the courts cannot review whether the FTC chooses to enforce its legal settlements.

"In this case, plaintiff cannot point to any indication that Congress intended courts to monitor the FTC’s enforcement of its own consent decrees," she wrote.

She did not address the substance of EPIC's claim that the privacy changes would violate the settlement.

EPIC plans to appeal the ruling.

The privacy update will allow Google to share user information across its various services. For example, users could see ads in Gmail based on the videos they watched on YouTube.

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