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(Reuters) - France and Spain led a Europe-wide push on Thursday to get U.S. Internet giant Google to change its policies on collecting user data.
News that the U.S. National
Security Agency under the Prism surveillance program secretly gathered
user data from nine U.S. companies, including Google, to track people's movements and contacts makes the timing especially sensitive for Google.
France's data protection watchdog (CNIL) said Google had broken French law and gave it three months to change its privacy policies or risk a fine of up to 150,000 euros ($200,000).
Spain's
Data Protection Agency (AEPD) told Google it would be fined between
40,000 euros and 300,000 for five violations of the law, that it had
failed to be clear about what it did with data, may be processing a
"disproportionate" amount and holding onto it for an "undetermined or
unjustified" period of time.
Whoa , this is unexpected.
Google is a USA company. It must follow USA laws. But what happens when those USA laws are in conflict with other nations laws, especially in the area of Data Privacy ? Is negotiating with France and Spain actually going to do anything when the USA holds the strings to the puppet and can make them do anything ?
How many violations of privacy laws will it take, that Google has no control over it must do , will it take before all USA computer companies start getting banned from providing services to these countries ? One can already immagine local competiters drooling in anticipation of google, yahoo, and the like getting booted out of their little ponds.
All thanks to the antics of the USA government.
It's a new age out there, a post PRISM age.
And it's not Snowdens fault (the guy who leaked the existance of PRISM) because one of the first things any intelligence agency learns is that "two people can keep a secret , but only if one of them is dead" , so they must know that it is inevitable that all secrets eventually come to light. What did they think would happen when people found out you're recording every phone call in the world ? Every email , every facebook posting ?
This won't be boring , that's for sure.
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