On 23 September 2014 the Article 29 Working Party (the "Working Party"), an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy comprised of representatives from the national data protection authorities of the EU Member States, the European Data Protection Supervisor and the European Commission, communicated guidelines to Google in the form of a common list of requirements and possible compliance measures to be implemented. In 2012, Google had decided to merge the different rules of confidentiality for sixty of its services into a single policy which, due to the number of services involved, affected almost all European Internet users.
The guidelines offer potential solutions and give practical suggestions as to how Google's privacy policy could satisfy EU data protection requirements. Advice is provided on the information which should be provided to users. Such information ought to be visible, easily accessible and accurate. Google is advised to provide clearer details about processing, sharing and changes to the purpose of data collection. The Working Party offers recommendations as regards user control of personal data to enable users of Google's services to control the use of their data better. Google should define retention policies for all personal data of users processed by Google. The Working Party makes it clear that the recommendations are provided for illustrative purposes only and may not be the only means by which Google could achieve compliance.
The Working Party's compliance package does not pre-empt enforcement actions by national data protection authorities ("DPA") based on national law. As a matter of fact, the compliance package comes on the back of several sanctions which have already been imposed by the European DPAs against Google since 2012. By way of example, the French authority, the CNIL, issued a EUR 150,000 financial penalty and ordered Google to publish a statement about the decision on the French Google homepage for 48 hours.
The document setting forth the suggested compliance measures may be accessed here.
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