Slashdot Mirror
Google Fined By French Privacy Regulator
First time accepted submitter L-One-L-One writes "Following similar decisions in Spain and the Netherlands, Google was fined 150,000 euros by the French Data Protection authority today for breaching data protection legislation. This sanction follows a long inquiry triggered by Google's decision to change its privacy policy in March 2012. The authority notably considers that the new policy 'does not sufficiently inform its users of the conditions in which their personal data are processed, nor of the purposes of this processing,' and that Google combines 'all the data it collects about its users across all of its services without any legal basis.' While the fine may be barely noticeable for Google, the authority requires the search giant to publish this decision on Google's French homepage, google.fr for 48 hours within the next 8 days."
the law is most likely ok, the problem is that the fine is not proportional to the effects nor the size of the offending company.
they should fine a company for the amount of users affected, otherwise they always get away with "oh it was a typo by some engineer" (like the street view collection of wifi packets), and/or a percentage of the earnings, otherwise it's just a joke which discriminates against small companies, for a small company this amount could easily destroy it, even if it had a few users. Google in turn is screwing millions of users, and yet this fine is nothing to them.
Furthermore, they are actually saying that French law does not apply to them, just like they are arguing in the UK, so basically they are saying that they get to pick which laws apply to them, because when they are in the US, they say that US tax law does not apply to them.
Fuck them.