Following the revelations by Le Canard enchaîné of a file listing Force Ouvrière union officials associated with offensive comments (see our article), Mediapart has now revealed the data collection practices of the radio station Europe 1 between 2002 and 2017.
In 2017, the CNIL (French Data Protection Authority) issued a simple warning to the radio station Europe 1 after a report concerning the data collection, over a period of some twenty years, of listeners calling its switchboard.
The issues at hand included comments linked to listeners’ profiles based on their origin, health, or perceived sexuality.
Personal databases: “Inappropriate and insulting” comments
Half a million people have reportedly been registered since 2002, including nearly 500 blacklisted individuals, making it impossible for them to participate in the program despite paying for the radio station’s premium-rate number.
The CNIL (French Data Protection Authority) was able to find files containing the names, surnames, professions, telephone numbers, and speech patterns of listeners during an on-site inspection of the station’s computers, specifically the Chamane application used by call center operators.
“Big jerk,” “FASCIST!!!”, “old faggot voice!”, “racist and unpleasant, makes very subtle comparisons between Arabs and Chinese,” “never answers, that son of a bitch,” “Tunisian Jewish accent, insistent and unpleasant,” “North African accent, not always clear, talkative, needs to talk about her cancer,” “HIV-positive,” etc.
Read our analysis of another file of individuals whose names were annotated and who were subsequently sanctioned by the CNIL:
October 13, 2018: CNIL audit of Force Ouvrière
GDPR & CNIL: Station acknowledges “shameful data collection practices”
During its audit, the CNIL (French Data Protection Authority) identified several shortcomings, including “irrelevance, inadequacy, and excessive data collection, collection of sensitive data, and failure to define and adhere to a data retention period.”
Data retention, normally limited to two years, continued due to a “technical error” that Europe 1 has since rectified.
More generally, the CNIL justifies its lenient decision by citing the efforts made by the radio station following the drafting of its report.
The databases containing information collected between 2002 and 2016 have been cleaned, and an email was sent to the teams responsible for data processing to inform them of best practices.
