French Officials Say EU Will Sanction Google Over Privacy

taz346 writes "French officials said on Monday that the EU intends to sanction Google after the Internet search giant failed to respond to concerns about its privacy policy. 'At the end of a four-month delay accorded to Google to comply with the European data protection directive and to implement effectively (our) recommendations, no answer has been given,' said France's CNIL data protection agency. Google's new policy, implemented in March 2012, allows it to track users over multiple sites. Users who sign in to Google services cannot opt out. CNIL said a working group would meet next week to begin work on 'coercive actions which should be implemented before the summer' against Google."

Comments

Re:Damn nanny government

[alendit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_of_the_European_Union

Re:strange

[Trepidity]

Ah it looks like you're right, at least in terms of any serious sanctions. They do have the authority to impose fines, but the fine amounts look so small I assume Google just doesn't care. In fact, from what I can find, Google currently holds the record for a CNIL fine: in 2011 they were fined 100,000 Euros over wifi data that was recorded by Google Street View cars. They didn't bother to send any response to the inquiry that time, either.