EU might raise fines for data breaches

This makes a lot of sense.

Viviane Reding dismissed recent fines for Google as "pocket money" and said the firm would have had to pay $1bn under her plans for privacy failings. Ms Reding said such punishments were necessary to ensure firms took the use of personal data seriously.
And she questioned how Google was able to take so long to getting round to changing its policy.
"Is it surprising to anyone that two whole years after the case emerged, it is still unclear whether Google will amend its privacy policy or not?" she said in a speech.
Ms Reding, who is also vice-president of the European Commission, wants far tougher laws that would introduce fines of up to 5% of the global annual turnover of a company for data breaches.

If fines are intended to change corporate behavior, they need to be large enough so that avoiding them is a smarter business strategy than simply paying them.