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| France threatens to fine Google over Privacy Policy | | | France: Google's updated privacy policy is now more than a year old, but regulators in the EU are still pushing the search giant for a revamp.
Today, France's CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) threatened to fine Google unless it implements certain changes in the next three months. Google's policy, the agency said, violates the 1978 French Data Protection Act.
At issue is an update to Google's privacy policy that went into effect on March 1, 2012. The revamp consolidated 70 or so privacy policies across Google's products down to one. But with this change, Google also switched to one profile for users across all services rather than separate logins for offerings like YouTube, Search, and Blogger.
It's that account consolidation bit that had privacy advocates up in arms. In early Feb. 2012, the EU's Article 29 Working Party asked Google to "pause" its privacy policy update, but Google declined. By October, CNIL issued several recommendations that covered how Google might improve its privacy policies, but Google did not make any changes.
In Feb. 2013, CNIL criticized Google for not responding to its privacy-related inquiries in a timely fashion. In April, it announced plans to crack down on Google.
Google has maintained that its policy is lawful. "Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services," a spokeswoman said today. "We have engaged fully with the authorities involved throughout this process, and we'll continue to do so going forward."
CNIL, however, has asked that Google take certain steps to avoid sanctions. That includes more clearly informing users how their data is used, not combining their data "without legal basis," and getting permission to store tracking cookie information.
Data protection agencies in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.K. are still reviewing the case, CNIL said. Spain has opened a sanction procedure for the infringement of key principles of the Spanish Data Protection Law.
Google has already tangled with CNIL. In March 2011, it handed down a fine of 100,000 Euros against Google for the unauthorized collection of data via Wi-Fi networks. |
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