I've written before about corporate no-privacy policies relating to customer data, specifically relating to eBay's disregard for such niceties as, say, subpoenas or a court order. Today, I received an e-mail from Priceline, announcing that its Privacy Policies were changing effective July 18.  (I was impressed that I received an e-mail, and doubly-impressed that the e-mail contained links to both the old and new policies, as well as a link to an option to "continue your relationship with priceline under the Existing Privacy Policy.")  Curious, I compared the new policy to the old one, to see what had changed.

Outside of cosmetic changes, there is new language about external service providers (Priceline outsources some business processes), slightly modified language about cookies, things like that. And a few biggies.

1.  In the old version of the privacy agreement, Priceline had a emphasized their committment to customer privacy with this text, offset in a gold-colored box:

Priceline.com's Privacy Promise

 Priceline.com promises, and pricelinemortgage agrees, never to sell, rent, barter or share with any third party personally-identifying information collected during your use of the Site without your prior permission.

From time to time we may reveal general statistical information about our Site and visitors, such as number of visitors, number and type of goods and services purchased, etc., but we will never reference you by name or specific address.

Your trust and confidence are our highest priority.

(Emphasis added.) 

That section does not exist in the updated policy.  (The e-mail notification I received does contain the sentence "The changes to our Privacy Policy do not compromise our continued commitment to your privacy.")

2.  Priceline now has a feature called Priceline Powerdeals, offered in conjunction with (you guessed it) eBay.  The new policy informs customers interested in Powerdeals that the those services are governed by eBay's privacy policies.

3.  Finally, Priceline has added a paragraph that seems to give them blanket authorization to release customer data.  The paragraph reads:

Compliance with Law and Protection of Priceline.com: Priceline.com reserves the right to release Personal Data in order to comply with the law. We may also release Personal Data to enforce or apply the terms and conditions applicable to our products and services, or protect the rights, property or safety of priceline.com, our users, or others.

(Emphasis added.) 

My question.  Does "protect the rights, property or safety of ... our users" mean that Priceline is committed to protecting the rights of its customers to, say, due process?  the right (and yes, "right" is a wobbly word here) to be free from governmental review of your travel plans unless the government has a warrant or subpoena authorizing its access to such information?   I'm guessing not.