Google Hit Up With A Big Fine
Despite the Australian Federal Police decision to not pursue Google for collecting private information while compiling its panoramic Street View service, France’s data privacy regulator said on Monday night that it had imposed a record fine of 100,000 euros ($141,022) on the search engine giant.
“It is a record fine since we obtained the power in 2004 to impose financial sanctions in 2004,” the head of the CNIL regulator, Yann Padova, was quoted as saying in French daily newspaper Le Parisien.
The breach involved Google sucking up 600GB of “payload data” from unsecured wireless networks over several years while taking pictures for its Street View mapping service and was dubbed by Australia’s federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy as the “single greatest breach in the history of privacy”.
The CNIL said Google had pledged to erase all the private data, but that it had found “that Google has not refrained from using the data identifying Wi-Fi access points of individuals without their knowledge”.
The regulator said it decided to impose the fine as this constituted “unfair collection” of information under French law and it had received economic benefits from the data.
In July last year, the then Australian Privacy Commissioner, Karen Curtis, completed her investigation into Google and found that the company had breached the Privacy Act but said that the act did not empower her to impose any sanctions on Google.
Instead, the company gave her an undertaking that it would
* Conduct a “Privacy Impact Assessment” on any new Street View data collection activities in Australia that include personal information.
* Provide a copy of these PIAs to her office.
* Regularly consult with the Australian Privacy Commissioner about personal data collection activities arising from significant product launches in Australia.
In December, the AFP, which was asked in June by the Attorney-General to investigate the matter, decided it would not pursue the matter further due to the difficulty of gathering evidence and its determination that the privacy breach was inadvertent.
Google launched in 2007 its Street View service, which provides panoramic views of city streets, but its arrival in Europe sparked controversy over privacy concerns.
In addition to concerns about the photos taken, Google admitted last year that its specially equipped cars taking the photographs were also picking up Wi-Fi data and had inadvertently captured unencrypted private data including passwords and emails.