A German privacy regulator fined Google
€145,000 on Monday for the systematic, illegal collection of personal
data while it was creating the Street View mapping service, and called
on European lawmakers to significantly raise fines for violations of
data protection laws.
Johannes Caspar, the data protection supervisor in Hamburg, said the fine, which was close to the maximum of €150,000, or $195,000, that he could legally impose, was woefully inadequate to stop the collection practices of companies as large as Google.
The fine levied by Mr. Caspar, the largest assessed so far by European regulators over privacy concerns, amounts to roughly 0.002 percent of Google’s $10.7 billion in net profit last year.
“As long as violations of data protection law are penalized with such insignificant sums, the ability of existing laws to protect personal privacy in the digital world, with its high potential for abuse, is barely possible,” Mr. Caspar said.
In 2010, Mr. Caspar’s agency became the first to uncover Google’s collection of data from Wi-Fi routers in Germany, and the company acknowledged that it had also collected data in a similar fashion for Street View around the world, prompting an uproar from Washington to Hong Kong.
Google characterized the collection as inadvertent and the result of a programmer’s error. Fragments of personal e-mails, photographs and other unencrypted digital data were collected by Google’s fleet of Street View automobiles as they compiled panoramic maps covering about five million miles, or eight million kilometers, of roadway in 49 countries.
Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel, reiterated the company’s regrets, and said it had taken internal steps to make sure the violations were not repeated.
“We work hard to get privacy right at Google,” Mr. Fleischer said in a statement. “But in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue.”
The Google project leaders had inadvertently collected the data, he said. “We never wanted this data, and didn’t use it or even look at it,” Mr. Fleischer said, adding that the company had “cooperated fully” with Hamburg data protection officials on the investigation.
Google said it would not appeal the fine.
Anna Fielder, a trustee at Privacy International, a group based in London that supports strong data protection laws, said the existing legal regimes in Europe and much of the world were ill equipped to meet the challenges of protecting personal information.
“Germany has the strongest data protection laws in Europe, and this is all they could do,” Ms. Fielder said. “Most businesses are not complying with data protection laws because the costs of noncompliance — I mean these tiny penalties — are so low.”
Google’s disclosure that it had collected the private information set off a series of investigations by regulators around the world, the majority of which were settled by Google with a simple apology or with fines that were considered trivial for the world’s biggest Internet search company.
Johannes Caspar, the data protection supervisor in Hamburg, said the fine, which was close to the maximum of €150,000, or $195,000, that he could legally impose, was woefully inadequate to stop the collection practices of companies as large as Google.
The fine levied by Mr. Caspar, the largest assessed so far by European regulators over privacy concerns, amounts to roughly 0.002 percent of Google’s $10.7 billion in net profit last year.
“As long as violations of data protection law are penalized with such insignificant sums, the ability of existing laws to protect personal privacy in the digital world, with its high potential for abuse, is barely possible,” Mr. Caspar said.
In 2010, Mr. Caspar’s agency became the first to uncover Google’s collection of data from Wi-Fi routers in Germany, and the company acknowledged that it had also collected data in a similar fashion for Street View around the world, prompting an uproar from Washington to Hong Kong.
Google characterized the collection as inadvertent and the result of a programmer’s error. Fragments of personal e-mails, photographs and other unencrypted digital data were collected by Google’s fleet of Street View automobiles as they compiled panoramic maps covering about five million miles, or eight million kilometers, of roadway in 49 countries.
Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel, reiterated the company’s regrets, and said it had taken internal steps to make sure the violations were not repeated.
“We work hard to get privacy right at Google,” Mr. Fleischer said in a statement. “But in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue.”
The Google project leaders had inadvertently collected the data, he said. “We never wanted this data, and didn’t use it or even look at it,” Mr. Fleischer said, adding that the company had “cooperated fully” with Hamburg data protection officials on the investigation.
Google said it would not appeal the fine.
Anna Fielder, a trustee at Privacy International, a group based in London that supports strong data protection laws, said the existing legal regimes in Europe and much of the world were ill equipped to meet the challenges of protecting personal information.
“Germany has the strongest data protection laws in Europe, and this is all they could do,” Ms. Fielder said. “Most businesses are not complying with data protection laws because the costs of noncompliance — I mean these tiny penalties — are so low.”
Google’s disclosure that it had collected the private information set off a series of investigations by regulators around the world, the majority of which were settled by Google with a simple apology or with fines that were considered trivial for the world’s biggest Internet search company.
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