EU member states agree higher fines for firms for privacy violations

By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Businesses operating in the European Union could be fined up to 4 percent of their annual global turnover for breaching data protection rules under a proposal agreed on Wednesday. The EU is negotiating a data protection law to replace a patchwork of national laws dating back to 1995, aiming to set clearer limits on how companies can use EU citizens’ private data and beef up regulators’ enforcement powers. Under the current system, not all national regulators have the power to levy fines, and when they do the amounts are often paltry compared with the revenues of some of the companies affected, particularly big U.S.

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Hacking of U.S. government was criminal, not state-sponsored: China

China's official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday that an investigation into a massive U.S. computer breach last year that affected more than 22 million federal workers found the hacking attack was criminal, not state-sponsored. In an article about a meeting between top U.S.

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