With Google already trying to contain the damage to its reputation
from the National Security Agency (NSA) leaks, it now risks another dent
to its image, as European privacy officials threaten to fine the
company for sucking up vast amounts of user information without
explaining the purpose.
On Thursday, French officials gave Google three months to explain how
long it stores the information it gathers through Gmail, YouTube and
other services, and to explain why it is collecting it. If Google fails
to comply, which looks possible, it could face fines in France of up to
about $400,000. “We realized that they are collecting a huge amount of
data on each of us, and most people know nothing about this,” Isabelle
Falque-Pierrotin, president of France’s National Commission on Computing
and Freedom, told TIME on Thursday. “It is time for action.”
Of course, the fines alone are unlikely to work: they are a piddling
amount for Google, whose market cap is close to $300 billion; it earned
about $14 billion in the first quarter of this year, much of it from
targeted ads through collecting user data. On Thursday, a British
privacy activist Nick Pickles told the Associated Press
that he worried that the fines “won’t be a particularly strong
deterrent, that Google may see it as the price of doing business.”
Still, the fines in Europe could begin to add up, if each of the
E.U.’s 27 members follow France’s lead. The French decision on Thursday
was part of a joint action with Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain
and Spain, all of which have said they too are weighing whether to fine
Google. The penalties could also increase, if the E.U.’s privacy
commissioner Viviane Reding succeeds in pushing through an increase in
maximum fines on tech companies, from a maximum of about $800,000 to 2%
of global sales.
The E.U.’s case against Google began when the company rolled out its
new privacy policy in February last year, which put all 60 or so Google
services, including Gmail, contacts, calendar and YouTube, under one
joint statement of terms, paving the way to sharing user data between
different sites. Google has touted the change as being a good thing for
users, since it was simpler for people to understand. But in Europe,
where privacy is tightly controlled, the change quickly raised
suspicions that the company was intruding on people’s lives without them
being aware of it. Google insists it consulted E.U. officials long
before the policy rolled out. “Our privacy policy respects European
law,” Al Verney, Google spokesman in Brussels, said in a statement on
Thursday. “We have engaged fully with the authorities throughout this
process, and we will continue to do so going forward.”
The true potential damage is to Google’s reputation, however.
Although the timing is coincidental — the E.U. countries last October
gave Google four months to respond — France’s decision comes just 10
days after NSA contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the
agency’s Prism program.
Snowden revealed that the government had access
to mountains of user data from tech companies, Google among them, and
sent the industry scrambling to show how the government had compelled it reluctantly to turn over data.
Clearly, the case against Google’s privacy policies is an unrelated
issue. But coming so soon after Snowden’s leaked information, it could
add to doubts people have about how private their online lives are. In
Europe, the NSA leak has been explosive news, and to many, it has shown
the U.S. tech giants having far too great a power over Europeans’ lives.
“We didn’t imagine the Prism events, but the whole environment now is
putting more pressure on actors like Google,” says Falque-Pierrotin. In
pursuing her case, she said she became increasingly aware that while
U.S. tech companies should be free to do commerce, the real problem was
how opaque their data collection was. “We say, ‘Your ambition is to be
the hub of our digital life, fine, that’s your business,’” she says.
“But the market needs transparency and trust.”
Sources : Time
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