South Korea’s Supreme Court said Thursday that Alphabet Google should disclose whether the tech giant shared information about local users with third parties, sending the case back to a lower court.
The Supreme Court decision came after a group of four plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Google and its South Korean unit in 2014 to force the company to disclose its handling of local users’ personal data.
The group alleged that the tech company shared private user information through PRISM, the US National Security Agency’s surveillance program.
“We will carefully review the Supreme Court’s full written decision,” a Google spokesperson said. On the same day, the Supreme Court also upheld a previous ruling ordering Qualcomm to pay a fine of about 1 trillion won ($761.68 million) for abusing its dominant market position, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said.
The Supreme Court’s rulings in both cases are in line with South Korea’s recent tendency to take a hard line on regulatory matters involving foreign tech giants. South Korea’s antitrust regulator fined Google 42.1 billion won ($31.88 million) for blocking the publishing of mobile video games on a rival platform. KFTC said the move against the US tech giant was part of the government’s efforts to ensure fair markets.
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