Google Fined 100,000 euros ($142,000) In France Over Street View

[engine]

Google Fined 100,000 euros ($142,000) In France Over Street View [google.com]

France's data privacy regulator said Monday it had imposed a record fine of 100,000 euros ($142,000) on Google for private information collected while compiling its panoramic Street View service.

CNIL, the National Commission for Information Freedom, 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.

[minnapple]

Google has apologize and has taken actions to ensure that such [word, words] will not [word, words] repeat again.

Wait, did I read that second part or did I only imagine it?

Sorry, there was no mention in the article of them taking any action to ensure that a similar thing will not happen again.

[Leosghost]

French law says if they do it again they get fined again ..and again etc

The original Cnil ( Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés ) ruling ( it is able to decide on breaches of law relating to data privacy etc and punish them without recourse to outside courts ) ran to 32 pages of what it didn't like about Googles activities in France.

The wi-fi "slurp" got details of peoples sexual habits ( their connections to pron sites, "flirt" sites , dating sites, and health sites ) ..and had the peoples names and their login details ( in some cases passwords ) to the sites ..

« une intrusion très grave dans la vie privée », résume la Cnil

<translation>"A very grave intrusion into private life", summed up the Cnil</translation>

The CNIL is also not happy about "Google Latitude" not disclosing to those who download it that it phones home when they switch their phones on and allows their location to be tracked and displayed to others.

For those who read French ..here is a reasonably in depth "exclusive" ( actually others are carrying details too ) article in the "leparisien" newspaper published 21 march [leparisien.fr...]

[frontpage]

Google - The First World Wide Spy Agency That Webmasters Voluntarily Help.

[Maurice]

so the Cnil has no appeal procedure :-) and I am am a little unsure how you capture username and passwords - surly these would be encypted, if not are not the operators of thae sites guilty of a much worse breach.

[Leosghost]

so the Cnil has no appeal procedure :-)

They do.. Google has 2 months in which to appeal

re .passwords and user names ..you'd be amazed how many are sent in "clear" ( even though they may be stored encrypted on the actual sites ..the site users frequently send in clear ..how many times are sites login pages not HTTPS ? )....lots of what we think of as "secure" stuff is actually sent in "clear" filezilla had a problem with this just recently.

[gabbrunner]

It's a tricky question this.. We all benefit from things like Street View, but I am sure more than one marriage has broken up over it...