French Regulators Fine Google €50 million for GDPR Violations

The Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) announced the imposition of a financial penalty of 50 Million Euros under new financial sanction limits granted by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for a cited lack of transparency, inadequate information, and lack of valid consent regarding ads personalization.  CNIL received two separate complaints in May 2018, from public interest groups which initiated this process. 

In order to deal with the complaints received, the CNIL carried out online inspections in September 2018.  The aim was to verify the compliance of the processing operations implemented by GOOGLE with the French Data Protection Act and the GDPR by analyzing the browsing pattern of a user and the documents he or she can have access, when creating a GOOGLE account during the configuration of a mobile equipment using Android.  The CNIL observed violations of the obligations of transparency and information and violations of the obligation to have a legal basis for ads personalization processing.   

This is the first time that the CNIL applied the new sanction limits provided by the GDPR.  “The amount decided, and the publicity of the fine, are justified by the severity of the infringements observed regarding the essential principles of the GDPR: transparency, information and consent.”  The CNIL noted that the violations are continuous breaches of the Regulation as they are still observed to date. 

The Regulatory Mix Today:   French Regulators Fine Google €50 million for GDPR Violations, Mississippi May Allow Electric Coops to Offer Broadband Services

Mississippi May Allow Electric Coops to Offer Broadband Services

The Mississippi Senate is considering a bill already passed by the House that would authorize an electric coop to permit a broadband affiliate or unaffiliated broadband provider to own, lease, construct, maintain and operate a broadband system on the coop’s electric delivery system to provider broadband services to the public.  The coop would be prohibited from charging its affiliate less than it charges an unaffiliated entity for the same service, including pole attachments or from using its electric revenues to subsidize the provision of broadband services.  It could, however, make capital investments in an affiliate, make loans to it, and enter into loan guarantees for the benefit of the affiliate.  Prior to offering broadband service the coop must conduct a feasibility study and may not allow the installation of the broadband system to diminish the reliability of its electric delivery system.  Finally, the coop could neither force its customers to use its broadband system or disconnect a customer’s electric service for failure to pay bills for the broadband service. 

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The Regulatory Mix, Inteserra’s blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of an Inteserra Briefing.

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