Brussels, 09/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - According to a report by AFP, on 3 January, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL) in France imposed a €150,000 fine on Google for refusing to ensure that its internet data confidentiality policy complied with French law. This is the heaviest fine that the CNIL has ever imposed. In its decision published on 8 January, the CNIL stated that the company did not respect the law on information technology and freedom and underlined the number and serious nature of breaches observed. In addition to this fine, Google has, within a week, to publish a press release on this decision on google.fr for a period of 48 hours.
The US company has declared that it would take note of the CNIL's decision and consider the appropriate follow-up action to take. The dispute follows the decision of the US company on 1 March 2012, to merge the different confidentiality rules applicable to around 60 of its services including Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Picasa, Google Drive, Google Docs and Google Maps. The CNIL believes that this merger does not comply with the 1995 European legal rules and has issued a number of recommendations. The European Commission, through Viviane Reding, also said at the time that the new Google policy did not comply with current European provisions.
CNIL called on Google to provide an account of where the personal data collected was finally stored when internet users used its services or search engine. It also requested that the company provide information regarding the length of time this information was stored. The CNIL said that the US company should also provide users with information and obtain their prior consent to the installation of cookies on their terminal. Cookies are files that are used for targeted advertising.
A number of other European data protection agencies have also taken action against Google. In Spain, for example, the authorities fined the US company €900,000 for serious privacy breaches.
The new regulation on personal data protection is still being discussed and there are plans to introduce fines that could be as high as 2% of a given company's global annual turnover. (SP/transl.fl)