My partner Ray is a privacy expert and does a lot of advocacy for consumer privacy rights. He is also does a lot of thinking, talking and writing on the subject. His latest column for eSecurity Planet really captures the dawning reality of how ethically off-kilter Google is when it comes to privacy and got me thinking.

Often it seems the media just gets it completely backwards on privacy. In the one instance of Google demonstrably doing the right thing (though I think it was different business reasons temporally aligned with privacy), Google resisted the government’s request for search data. The media and the market took Google out to the woodshed for that one. In every other case though they have had very few consequences for their privacy blunders.

On privacy, Yahoo! has often been treated strangely by the media. There was a much-publicized incident about a year ago when Yahoo! refused to hand over the email of a dead Marine to his parents. Throughout the process Yahoo! was vilified as being hard-hearted, and sometimes even unpatriotic. Against the public consensus, I was really proud of Yahoo! that day. Yahoo! has a privacy-friendly policy and despite the dramatic nature of the circumstances we held to it. This is what you should want a company doing for you.

My take on the situation is that Yahoo! shouldn’t be in the business of deciding who to give YOUR email to. The correct process was for the parents to go through the probate court and get the proof that satisfied Yahoo!’s policies. They did just that and got their son’s email. Upon taking legal possession of their son’s estate, Yahoo! should comply with the request for the email. And they did. Hurrah, the system works and we get to keep our privacy.