Google negotiates a multimillion-dollar fine with the US authorities for the way in which geolocation was managed on Android terminals which, it was said, continued to work even “without the knowledge” of users. The sanction, which fans of statistics have not hesitated to call “record-breaking”, is actually the symbol of the hypocrisy that governs political, regulatory and control activity on both sides of the Atlantic because it reaffirms the principle that justice consists in condemning to “pay” and not to repair the wrongdoing.
Cybersecurity
Agreement between the data protection supervisor and the IT security association
To a normal person, nearly four hundred million dollars may seem like a huge sum. For a multinational, especially if we consider earnings and profits in perspective, they can represent a nuisance, a problem to be managed in the short term or a criticality towards shareholders and investors. However, such sanctions can hardly bring a subject like Google to its knees or lead to milder advice. Similarly to what happens in the world of mobile telephony, in fact, the returns produced by the unstoppable and irrational use of network connections by individuals keeps the return of investment so high that the penalties are inconveniences, sometimes not even unpredictable, but unable to significantly alter the commercial strategies of a colossus.
If, instead of just asking for money, the authorities had demanded the cancellation of the collected data, the modification of the way in which they are acquired and the blocking of the treatments until the changes had been made, this would have had really afflictive consequences. for Google and “generalpreventive” towards the other Big Tech. In reality, therefore, opting for a simple pecuniary sanction and not for alternatives such as those indicated is equivalent on the part of the institutions to suggest that if you have enough resources, you can afford not to respect people’s rights because everything is resolved in the get some money out.
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It could be observed that the US legislation does not provide for, or would not have allowed for such a solution and that therefore it would not have been possible to adopt a measure of “restorative justice”. It may be so on that side of the ocean, but it certainly isn’t so on this side of the ocean. In the European Union, national data protection authorities have the power to order blocks and deletions of data, and can also do so against non-EU subjects who process data of citizens of states that adhere to the EU Treaty. Furthermore, they can apply this power without having to go through international agreements. If there is any doubt, just refer to a very recent provision of the XIV section of the Milan Business Court issued on November 4, 2022 against the American provider Cloudflare. The decision, in fact, established that the orders of the Italian authorities are immediately enforceable even for foreign operators. The case concerned the provider’s refusal to apply a block to its DNS to prevent the violation of the copyright of some music labels, but the principle can also be generalized to other cases, such as that of personal data. Finally, there is also no need to wait for reports or complaints because the national protection authorities can move without being solicited by someone, especially when the case is as serious as the one involving Google.
Therefore, the point of this story, but in general of all those that have involved industrial giants of other sectors, is not that someone is “angry” with this or that multinational “guilty” of having “violated fundamental rights”. If they did they must be sanctioned and that shouldn’t even make the news. The question that should be asked, however, is why too often the public authorities (not only the independent ones) continue not to fully exercise the powers attributed to them by law to effectively protect the rights of the injured parties, limiting themselves to imposing financial penalties exemplary, indeed, record-breaking.