Four hundred million fine to Google. Because it is wrong that rights have a price
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Google is negotiating a multimillion-dollar fine with the US authorities for the way geolocation was managed on Android terminals which, it was said, continued to function even “unbeknownst” to users. The sanction, which statistics enthusiasts have not hesitated to define as “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 wrong done.
Cybersecurity
Agreement between the data protection authority and the information 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 critical issue for shareholders and investors. However, sanctions of this kind 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 yields produced by the unstoppable and irrational use of network connections by individuals keeps the return on investment so high that the penalties are inconveniences, sometimes not even unforeseeable, but unable to significantly alter the commercial strategies of a giant.
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 modifications had been implemented, this would have had really afflictive consequences for Google and “general preventive” towards the other Big Techs. 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 suggesting that if you have enough resources you can afford not to respect people’s rights because everything is resolved in any case get some money out.
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It could be observed that 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 that way on that side of the ocean, but it certainly isn’t that way on this side. In the European Union, national data protection authorities have the power to order blocking and deletion of data, and they can also do so with respect to non-EU subjects who process data of citizens of states that adhere to the EU Treaty. Furthermore, they can apply this power without needing to go through international agreements. In case 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 authority are immediately enforceable also for foreign operators. The case concerned the provider’s refusal to apply a block to its DNS to prevent infringement of the copyrights of some music labels, but the principle can also be generalized to other cases, such as that of personal data. Finally, there is no need to wait for reports or complaints because the national protection authorities can move without being prompted by anyone, 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 from other sectors, is not that someone has “picked it out” with this or that multinational “guilty” of having “violated fundamental rights”. If they did, they should be sanctioned and that shouldn’t even make the news. The question that should be asked, however, is why too often public authorities (not just independent ones) continue not to fully exercise the powers attributed to them by law to effectively protect the rights of injured parties, limiting themselves to imposing fines exemplary, indeed, record-breaking.
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