Google Fined Record $142,000 by France for Street View Privacy Violations

[onehandle]

Source: Bloomberg News

Google Inc. (GOOG) was fined a record 100,000 euros ($142,000) for violations of French privacy rules by its Street View mapping service, the country’s data protection regulator said today.

Google’s infractions included collecting passwords and e- mails transferred wirelessly, the National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties said today in a statement. CNIL, as the regulator is known, levied its highest fine ever because of the gravity of breaches and “the economic advantages Google gained from these violations,” according to the statement.

Google has been targeted by data-protection authorities in the European Union for its Street View program, which lets users click on maps to see photographs of roadsides. The European Commission, the EU’s executive agency, plans more harmonized data protection rules across the 27-nation region. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission closed a probe in October after Google said it would improve its safeguards.

Google is “profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted WiFi networks,” Peter Fleischer, the Mountain View, California-based company’s global privacy counsel, said in an e-mailed statement. “As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all WiFi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/google-fined-by-french-privacy-agency-for-street-view-violations.html

---

142 Grand? That'll show 'em.

Eric Schmidt can probably find that much between his ass cheeks.

[RKP5637]

1. Doesn't even make it to the penny level in Google-land, not even a gnat bite (byte). n/t

[demosincebirth]

7. Its like one mill to a billionaire

[Newest Reality]

2. That is the whole problem with the corporate veil in a

nutshell! Fine them some amount that is already factored-into their activities. They pay it, shrug, and continue forward writing it off.

When there is no actual person who is being fined and having legal action taken against them, (piercing the veil) then what's the incentive?

Obviously, we need to have more accountability in the sense that the corporate veil should be subject to piercing under certain, defined circumstances. Who decided that an activity should be undertaken by the company? What was their knowledge of the actions that transpired and what was the motivation? Once those questions are answered, then it should be determined if the protection of the corporate veil applies.

[A HERETIC I AM]

3. I've seen a BUNCH of their cars lately....

I am driving an OTR Car Hauler and was traveling west on I 10 in Florida a couple weeks back. Saw at least a dozen of them headed East in the Panhandle.

I got out to California 10 days ago and saw a bunch of them on I 5 headed South as well.

[Whoa_Nelly]

4. ass cheeks

:rofl:

K&R

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

5. What will they do when Google gets to London? Don't they (London) have camera's everywhere?

[KoKo]

6. Good...Google's Mapping of Private places is not a good thing.

[boppers]

8. Public streets and radio broadcasts are private?

Interesting theory.

[RKP5637]

12. Also, people sign up for Google free stuff, thinking isn't this great, it's free, meanwhile

Google is playing them for suckers.

[SirHarukaTheThird]

9. I fail to see how a $142k fine means ANYTHING to google.

[boppers]

11. It's a big, round, number: 100,000 euros.

It also justifies (somewhat) the several hundred thousand euros that France spent trying to make a case.

For google, it's a laughably small amount, but enough to make them pay instead of wasting more time and money on it.

[boppers]

10. "the economic advantages Google gained from these violations"

Uhm, what advantage would that be? Information on where people are broadcasting from?

[reggie the dog]

13. there is a picture of me walking my daughter in the stroller

in the town we lived in a couple of years ago whent he google car drove by.