Google told the EU that the EU Privacy Laws did not apply to Google’s services and the EU now plans to impose a sanction for “breaches of the French Data Protection Act of 6 January 1978, as amended (French Data Protection Act) which, in practice, prevents individuals from knowing how their personal data may be used and from controlling such use.”

On behalf of the EU on June 20, 2013 the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) ordered Google to comply with French Data Protection Act within three months in particular:

  • Define specified and explicit purposes;
  • Inform users with regard to the purposes of the processing implemented;
  • Define retention periods for the personal data processed;
  • Not proceed, without legal basis, with the potentially unlimited combination of users’ data;
  • Fairly collect and process passive users’ data;
  • Inform users and then obtain their consent in particular before storing cookies in their terminal.

Computerworld reported that:

Google could be fined a maximum of Euro€150,000 (US$202,562), or Euro€300,000 for a second offense, and could in some circumstances be ordered to refrain from processing personal data in certain ways for three months.

Since Google accounts for about 90% of searches in the EU the imposition of sanctions is very important to Google’s future in the EU.
 

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