EU Commissioner Says Europe Needs to Get Serious on Fines

The European Union Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, has called the current fines levied for violations of European data privacy laws “pocket money” to companies like Google that breach data privacy laws within the European Union (“EU”). Europeans need to “get serious,” Reding said. In a January 19 speech delivered at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, Reding’s comments came after France’s Commission Nationale de l'informatique et des Libertes (“CNIL”) fined Google for violating the existing data protection rules. Reding said that despite the numerous violations, the $203,000 penalty was the largest fine that the commission is permitted to apply. CNIL found that Google’s all-encompassing privacy policy does not inform users just how their personal data is used or collected, does not obtain user consent prior to storing cookies, fails to define data retention periods, and combines data across its services without any legal basis.