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EU Commissioner Renews Call for Serious Fines in Data Privacy Laws
DW100 writes "Despite Google being fined €900,000 by Spanish authorities and €150,000 in France for its controversial privacy policies in recent months, an EU commissioner has admitted this is mere 'pocket money' to the company. Instead, a new legal regime that would have seen Google fined $1bn for breaching data protection laws is needed to make U.S. companies fear and respect the law in Europe. 'Is it surprising to anyone,' asked Commissioner Viviane Reding, 'that two whole years after the case emerged, it is still unclear whether Google will amend its privacy policy or not? Europeans need to get serious. And that is why our reform introduces stiff sanctions that can reach as much as 2% of the global annual turnover of a company. In the Google case, that would have meant a fine of EUR 731 million (USD 1 billion). A sum much harder to brush off.'"
The EU is also responsible for the Data Retention Directive. Worse, most of their spy agencies are just as bad as the NSA. When you combine that with the lack of free speech in many EU countries it doesn't paint a pretty picture.
They're going to force companies to keep user data on EU soil. Which sounds nice, but that means they can force companies to keep your data for as long as they want and hand it all over to "law enforcement" when you've done something inconvenient. They will then have things like search results censored. (See Google France) I hate to say it, but people in the EU have even less privacy than those of us in the US. Even with/especially because of these privacy directives.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
Yes, it sure would suck for EU tech companies to suddenly have a few hundred million customers with a well-defined and established need in a market where the incumbent dominant player has just decided to quit. I am sure that their bank managers would complain about them putting more into their accounts than they were expecting and their politicians would be very upset by all of that money flowing in their economies instead of going to the US.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Solution: Fine them for random stuff for a lot of money.
This isn't random stuff.
Just because the US doesn't know what proper consumer protection and privacy laws are doesn't mean it isn't important.
For those keeping track, all of their highest-ever Cartel fines were against EU companies, in one case jointly with a Korean company. If you read the numbers in the PDF they make everything Google and MS have ever paid with seem like a diner tip.
Saint Gobain (France)
Philips (Netherlands) and LG Electronics (Korea)
Deutsche Bank AG (Germany)
F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG (Switzerland)
Société Générale (France)
Siemens AG (Germany)
Pilkington (UK)
E.ON (Germany)
GDF Suez (France)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?