Ireland Watchdog sued for Inaction Over Massive Google Data Breach

The Data Protection Commission of Ireland, working as the government’s watchdog, is now being sued for alleged years of inaction over complaints regarding the massive Google data breach ever. Per the lawsuit, the watchdog was secretive in responding to security complaints filed against Google when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, was passed.

Ireland Watchdog sued for Inaction Over Massive Google Data Breach

The litigation has been prepared by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) whose senior fellow, Johnny Ryan, is named as the plaintiff.

We are taking the Irish Data Protection Commission to court.
For 3½ years it has failed to act on a GDPR complaint against Google’s massive Real-Time Bidding (“RTB”) advertising data breach. https://t.co/TIxgXEglb4

— Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) March 14, 2022

At issue is the DPC’s response to a long-running complaint about Google’s role in the high-velocity trading of web users’ personal data to determine which ads get served — and, more specifically, the lack of attention the data-trading systems of the tracking-based ad targeted advertising industry pay to security.

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The ICCL’s suit thus accuses the DPC of a failure to act on what it couches as a massive data breach.

Back in 2020, Ryan has published a number of evidence highlighting how the online ad-targeting industry profiles internet users’ intimate characteristics without their knowledge or consent — calling out the DPC for ongoing inaction over the RTB security complaint.

On the other hand, Ireland did not open an inquiry based on the substance of Ryan’s complaint; rather it opened what’s known as an own volition inquiry — saying it would seek to “establish whether processing of personal data carried out at each stage of an advertising transaction is in compliance with the relevant provisions of the GDPR, including the lawful basis for processing, the principles of transparency and data minimisation, as well as Google’s retention practices”, as it put it at the time.

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Source: Tech Crunch