France's National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties claims that Google is refusing to comply with French law regarding its online data privacy policy.
France's National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties (Cnil) announced today that it is imposing the maximum fine, 150,000 euros, on the American company Google, which continues to refuse to comply with French law regarding its Internet data privacy policy.
In addition to this fine, the Cnil also ordered Google to publish “a notice relating to this decision on the main page of google.fr within eight days of notification” of this decision, and this for 48 hours.
This dispute concerns Google's privacy policy, which in March 2012 merged around sixty user regulations into a single one, thus merging the data of its services that were once separate, such as Gmail and Google+.
At the time, the CNIL had asked Google to disclose the purpose of the personal data it collects when an Internet user uses its services or surfs its search engine, and to set a duration for the retention of this data.
She also asked the American company to inform and seek prior consent from users before installing "cookies" on their computers.
However, in September 2013, the CNIL found that Google had not “implemented the modifications requested”.
In this context, the president of the CNIL, Isabelle Falk-Pierrotin, stated that she would “appoint a rapporteur to launch a formal sanctioning procedure, as provided for by the Data Protection and Freedoms Act” within three months.
The CNIL is not the only one to target Google: its new privacy regulations were unanimously denounced in 2012 by the data protection authorities of the then 27 EU member states, all of which had called on it to comply with the European Directive on Data Protection and Freedoms.
Six of these agencies—France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands—went even further and “took action,” each based on the procedures in force in their own country.
Therefore, the competent Spanish authority ordered Google on December 19 to pay a fine of 900,000 euros for “serious violations” of privacy.
Source: protothema.gr
