France

 France's data protection watchdog moved closer to fining Google for the way it stores and tracks user information after the search engine ignored a three-month ultimatum to bring its practices in line with local law.

The privacy watchdog, known as CNIL, said on Friday it was opening a procedure to impose formal sanctions. Under French law, Google can be fined up to 150,000 euros.

France's first electronic election has turned into a farce with reports coming in of the sort of election rigging that you would expect from third world countries like Afghanistan, Zimbabwe or the USA.

An "online-primary" claimed as "fraud-proof" and as "ultra secure" as the Maginot Line, has turned out to be vulnerable to a Blizkrieg of multiple and fake voting.

A French appeals court on Wednesday threw out a 1.5 million euro ($2 million) fine against energy giant EDF, overturning a lower court's ruling that the company had been complicit in hacking the computers of Greenpeace in 2006.

EDF had appealed against the November 2011 decision by the Nanterre criminal court that a company it hired had hacked into confidential information on the computer of Yannick Jadot, then campaign director for the environmental group and now a Greens member of the European Parliament.