Ten new complaints have been made to the data protection authorities of ten European countries, including Belgium, about targeted advertising on Google, Le Soir reported on Tuesday. The indictments brought by human rights leagues pointed at the "large-scale and systematic violation of personal data protection procedures."
The human rights leagues of ten European countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, Romania and Slovenia among others, are speaking out against Google's economic model as well as against all companies in the on-line behavioural advertising sector.
They have been pulled up on utilising web users' data to sell it on in real time to advertisers potentially interested in such users' profiles.
This ultra-personalised targeting in real time would be, according to the plaintiffs, quite simply illegal with regard to article 22 of the Constitution that stonewalls the right to private life. And this is the case above all by virtue of the new general law on data protection (the RGPD), which requires the surfer's explicit and prior consent.
In Belgium, a complaint had already been made to the Authority for Data Protection by Pierre Dewitte, researcher in information technology law at KULeuven. As for the RGPD, there is "no legal basis for justifying the handling of data of a personal nature necessary to the functioning" of this mechanism, he explained in Le Soir of May 22.
The Brussels Times
