Google ‘violates’ German rules

Google is having another run-in with European regulators over the protection of personal data.

This time, the operator of the biggest internet search engine is violating German rules by compiling customers’ data without asking for their consent, according to Johannes Caspar, who heads the data protection office for the German state of Hamburg. The agency plans to order Google to change its data-handling practices in the coming weeks, he said.

“By compiling data from its different services under a single user ID, Google has access to a personal profile of its users,” Mr Caspar said, adding Google could face fines if it doesn’t change its practices. “Google has to respect its users’ right of self-determination.”

Google is in discussions with the watchdog over its privacy policy, Hamburg-based spokesman Kay Oberbeck said. The policy allows the company to develop “simpler and more effective offers.”

Google implemented a new privacy policy in March 2012 that condensed 60 policies into one that shares and tracks user data across Google e-mail, social networking, YouTube and other services.

The French data watchdog led a probe on behalf of a EU task force to review whether Google’s revisions to its policies violated the bloc’s data protection rules. Regulators from France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, the UK and Germany coordinated enforcement measures in April 2013 over the company’s failure to address the task force’s complaints.

France’s National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties, or CNIL, fined Google the national maximum penalty of €150,000 in January for failing to give people enough details about how it uses their personal data. The fine followed a €900,000 penalty from Spanish regulators for violation of the country’s privacy law.

Google’s biggest European privacy fine to date was €1m in Italy, after the local regulator found its Street View cars drove incognito across the country, violating the privacy of citizens caught on camera without their knowledge.

Hamburg’s privacy regulator last year fined Google €145,000 for collecting wireless-network data from 2008 to 2010 by its cars taking photos for Street View.

The EU is seeking to empower national agencies to go beyond current penalties, to make sanctioning global companies more effective.