In 2014, Europe’s highest court made a landmark ruling that declared that search engines were required to grant the right to be forgotten to its users. The ‘right to be forgotten’ is a rule that allows people or companies who have irrelevant, slanderous, or misleading information about them removed from search results.
SMALL VICTORY, BUT FRENCH ORGANIZATION WANTS TO MAKE THIS GLOBAL
This move was a great decision in the eyes of privacy groups who believe that this gives companies and people a way to defend themselves against the dangers of the Internet. However, the ruling only covered Europeans and only applied to the local search results in that continent. The results will still be available on the search engine’s main search results page.
A piece written in a post on the New York Times looks into the probability of this right to be forgotten ruling coming to other parts of the world. Many of the free speech watchdog groups believe that this might soon be coming to global Google search result pages, including those in the United States.
A French order to apply the ‘right to be forgotten’ to all Google searches and not just those in Europe, has been denied by the tech giant. They say that this would have very serious effects on the internet. Google is now asking that the French agency that issued this order to now withdraw it.
ORDER ISSUED BY FRANCE’S CNIL
This order was issued by the French Commission National de l’informantique et des libertés, or the CNIL. The CNIL issued the global delisting order to Google in June and is giving the company 15 days to respond. Google has since respectfully declined to agree with the CNIL’s order. This was reported in a Google blog post earlier week from Google’s global privacy counselor.
GOOGLE HAS ALREADY RECEIVED FINES FOR VIOLATING FRENCH DATA PROTECTION ACT
A spokesperson for France’s CNIL has received Google’s request for the withdrawal of this order, and will respond within the two-month time period that is required. If they decide to deny Google’s request, the CNIL can give Google fines for not complying. Early last year, the CNIL issued a fine of over $160,000 to Google for changes in the privacy policy that the agency deemed in violation of the French Data Protection Act.
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