'˜Right to be forgotten' unlikely to go global on Google

The '˜right to be forgotten' looks less likely to go global on Google and other search engines after an adviser at the EU's top court said it was not justified.
The 'right to be forgotten' that applies to Google searches may remain unique to the EU. Picture: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty ImagesThe 'right to be forgotten' that applies to Google searches may remain unique to the EU. Picture: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images
The 'right to be forgotten' that applies to Google searches may remain unique to the EU. Picture: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images

At present, the right to be forgotten allows citizens in EU countries to demand any results about them considered “inadequate, irrelevant or... excessive” to be removed, if the search is carried out in an EU country – even though the web page would still exist, it would be difficult to find on a search engine.

It came into force in 2014, after Spanish national Mario Costeja sought to remove out-of-date links relating to unsettled debts since settled.

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France’s data regulator, had been probing the European Court of Justice to clarify whether the ability to de-list links should go beyond google.fr, the French site of Google, extending to other versions across the world. Advocate General Maciej Szpunar has issued his non-binding opinion to the European Court of Justice on the case, proposing the court should limit the scope of the dereferencing that search engine operators are required to carry out to the EU.

Mr Szpunar said the principle should be “balanced” against other rights, such as data protection and privacy, as well as the “legitimate public interest”.

“Public access to information, and the right to privacy, are important to people all around the world, as demonstrated by the number of global human rights, media and other organisations that have made their views known in this case,” Google’s senior privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said.

“We’ve worked hard to ensure that the right to be forgotten is effective for Europeans, including using geolocation to ensure 99 per cent effectiveness.”

Free speech advocacy groups are concerned that countries such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia would have greater power in censoring information on the internet if the principle was to be rolled out beyond the EU.

“European data regulators should not be able to determine the search results that internet users around the world get to see,” said Thomas Hughes, executive director of Article 19, a British-led group of non-governmental organisations.

The final judgment is not expected from the European Court of Justice until three to six months time.

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