Last month, the European Court of Justice ruled that individuals have the “right to be forgotten,” which holds that search-engine operators should delete outdated, inaccurate, or irrelevant information from the results they return. However, search-engine operators are finding this hard to accomplish, particularly because they have received huge volumes of deletion requests from users. . For example, Google says it is fielding an average of 10,000 requests per day. The right to be forgotten has proven to be controversial. Proponents say it is necessary to protect individual privacy. Opponents say that it is a form of censorship, will be too time-consuming and expensive to comply with, and will balkanize search result by creating one set for Europe and one for the rest of the world. Issues surrounding the European Court of Justice’s decision led to two days of meetings by EU data-protection authorities. The group of 28 data authority leaders is scheduled to produce an agreement specifying compliance requirements in September of this year. (TIME)(Reuters)
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Sunday, June 1, 2014
EU Court Backs “Right to Be Forgotten”
The top EU court has ruled that individuals may legally demand the removal of any links or information returned via search-engine results that could jeopardize their privacy. This is commonly referred to as “a right to be forgotten” and applies to “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data returned in search results. The case originated with a Spanish man who sought to have Google Spain delete a 1998 Catalonian newspaper article regarding his home being auctioned for failing to pay taxes. He argued the matter had been resolved and the material should no longer be linked to him. The new European Court of Justice ruling applies to all 28 EU member countries and all search-engine operators. Opponents say the ruling represents censorship. Attorneys practicing in the EU are concerned compliance could prove difficult because of the thousands of individual requests that could potentially be received by search engines and the need to carefully evaluate each of these. Others say the new rule could result in balkanized search results, with search results differing in Europe. Regulators throughout Europe have expressed concern about the way information on search engines, particularly Google, affect privacy. French, Italian, and Spanish officials have fined Google in the past over privacy matters. (Businessweek)(The Guardian)
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Google Not Responsible for “Right to Be Forgotten”
A senior European judicial official issued a formal opinion stating that Google and other search providers are not responsible for third-party information in their search results and that there is no general “right to be forgotten” in current data protection laws. The right to be forgotten addresses the storage of personal public data by organizations, including telecommunications providers, and places limits on the time the data is available. Under the EU’s Data Protection Directive, originally adopted in 1995, search engine service providers are not responsible for any personal data that may appear on the webpages they return in response to queries, stated European Court of Justice advocate general Niilo Jääskinen, in a formal opinion written to the court. National data protection authorities in Europe cannot require a search engine to remove third-party information from its index, such as a newspaper article, unless it is incomplete, inaccurate, libelous, or criminal. Jääskinen issued his opinion in response to a 2009 Spanish case in which an individual asked Google to remove old financial information about his debts that were originally published in a newspaper article from its index. Spain’s data-protection agency found in the individual’s favor and asked Google to remove the third-party information so that it wouldn’t appear again in search results. Google contested the ruling in court. Jääskinen’s opinion is not binding on the European Court of Justice, which is expected to issue a ruling later this year. (Financial Times)(BBC)(The Associated Press @ The San Jose Mercury-News)(PC World)(European Network and Information Security Agency)