Claire Wilson
SPAIN has become the first country to fine Google for breach of privacy laws.
The move follows advice from the French independent administrative authority earlier in the year, when six countries were told they should look into the matter.
Spain´s Agency for Data Protection has slapped the search agent giant with a €900,000 fine relating to three legal breaches: “gathering data on users, combining the data through several services and keeping the data indefinitely without the knowledge or consent of users.”
EU regulators urged Google to change its privacy policy in September 2012. The company ignored the request, clearing the way for a lengthy investigation that resulted in the CNIL advising European data protection authorities to take action.
Five other countries — Italy, Germany, France, the UK, and the Netherlands — may also decide to fine the American company in the coming months.
Pot, kettle, black. Every country named is up to it’s ears in data-mining.
Stefanjo is quite correct. Spain actually gives all of its phone records (that’s every single call that you make on a landline or mobile) directly to the NSA, so Spain is actually worse than Google in this respect. Spain often says it has the most strict data protection laws in the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.