TomTom apologies for giving customer driving data to cops

It's indeed not what people gave permission for "use this data to improve the service" is not: "sell to third parties and the government".

But at least they gave only anonymized, statistical data to the police, so they knew where a lot of people are speeding and could post there.

I'd have been outraged if they had passed individual customer data so the police could send traffic tickets after-the-fact. But that's luckily not the case.

Other news sources here in the Netherlands have also reported that it wasn't neccesarily direct info about individual users. A traffic analysis bureau created reports on this data for road management authorities, and the reports combined with accident data was were used to set speed traps.

This is the flip side of radar detecters. Its not like they are giving personalized information on a specific person.

“We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it,”

REALLY? You never foresaw clients not being happy about it??

Reread that quote. It is not saying what you think it is saying.