At the present time when Google removes material that is “to be forgotten” it’s only removed from .EU area domains (e.g. Google.fr ). Of course, any user of those versions of Google can simply go to Google.com or another to view the material that has been removed.
Google will have to change how it applies the right to be forgotten to its websites beyond the European Union under rules drafted by the EU’s privacy chiefs.
The guidelines also rebuke the owner of the world’s most-used search engine for routinely notifying news outlets about story links it has removed — a process that has thrown some people who’d sought extra privacy back into the media spotlight.
“All the extensions are included, including the .com,” Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, head of the EU group of 28 privacy watchdogs, told reporters in Brussels today. “There is no legal basis for routine transmissions from Google, or any other search engines, to editors,” she said. “It may, in some cases be necessary, but not as a routine and not as an obligation, as Google said.”
[Clip]
“One of the natural consequences” for implementing the EU court ruling “is that people do use Google more flexibly,” Paul Bernal, a lecturer in law at the University of East Anglia in England, said by phone. If “you can’t find what you want in Google.co.uk, then you use Google.com.”
[Clip]
Google has removed 41.5 percent, or 208,520 links of a total of 502,977 links it has evaluated since the EU court ruling in May, according to data last updated yesterday on Google’s transparency report. So far, it has received 174,226 requests for removal, according to the report.
Read the Complete Article
From Telecompaper:
EU data protection and privacy regulators have told Google to extend its implementation of the ‘right to be forgotten’ across its global search properties. An EU court ruling in May requires Google to remove links to sensitive information on its search engine based on a person’s name, if that person so requests. However, Google has implemented the ‘right to be forgotten’ only on its European domains.
[Our emphasis] The guidelines also cover complaints to the regulators over the process of implementing the right to be forgotten. They said they would consider any cases brought by someone with a connection to the EU, starting with citizens and residents of the bloc.
Bottom Line: Not Good (on many levels).
See Also: Press Release From the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Meeting Discussed in Bloomberg Article
See Also: EU Personal Data Privacy/Right-To-Be Forgotten Resources
About Gary Price
