Google facing action over privacy policy flaws

Google faces possible fines after six European Union data protection regulators started "coordinated" enforcement measures over the company's failure to fix flaws in a new privacy policy.

A taskforce of agencies led by France's National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties today began follow-up measures in line with their national laws after a meeting with Google yielded "no changes," the regulator known as CNIL said in an e-mailed statement today. UK, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch watchdogs are also part of the taskforce.

"CNIL notified Google of the initiation of an inspection procedure and that it had set up an international administrative cooperation procedure with its counterparts in the taskforce," the authority said.

Google, operator of the world's largest search engine, faces privacy investigations by authorities around the world as it debuts new services and steps up competition with Facebook for users and advertisers.

Google last year changed its system to create a uniform set of policies for more than 60 products, unleashing criticism from regulators and consumer advocates concerned it isn't protecting data it collects.

A Google spokesman Al Verney didn't immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which comprises national privacy authorities in the EU, earlier this year decided to pursue Google after a meeting in Brussels.

The group, led by CNIL, wrote to Google chief executive Larry Page in October, saying Google "empowers itself to collect vast amounts of personal data about internet users" without demonstrating that this "collection was proportionate," and asking the company to bring its policy in line with EU rules.

Earlier in the probe, Google and CNIL disagreed over the quality of the responses to data-protection concerns.

Google twice defied requests to delay implementing the streamlined privacy policy until CNIL could review it. Google then gave what CNIL called "often incomplete" information in response to a list of 69 questions, earning a rebuke in May and more questions. CNIL's heaviest fine to date was €100,000 against Google in 2011 for breaches related to its Street View mapping service.

Bloomberg