French Officials Say EU Will Sanction Google Over Privacy 161
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."
The stageplay of the EU (Score:2, Informative)
The EU is funding INDECT which will have automated scanning of all online communications.
But it will obviously only be used for detecting "child pornography" and "organ trafficking".
As in, you search through the online communications and profiles of every citizen in the EU to detect and expose organ trafficking, the major issue facing the EU right now.
Re:Damn nanny government (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_of_the_European_Union [wikipedia.org]
Re:strange (Score:5, Informative)
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 [www.cnil.fr] 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.
Re:EU should really get their priorities straight (Score:2, Informative)
PayPal is a bank, based in Luxemburg, in the EU, with all the rules and regulations that entails. You Americans should do follow suit.