Currently, a ruling by the highest court in the EU applies only to European domains, such as google.de in Germany or google.fr in France; individuals can still retrieve complete online information by using non-European domains such as google.com. Photo: AFP
Mark Scott
Europe is taking aim at Google - again. Privacy watchdogs in the European Union issued guidelines on Wednesday calling on the company to apply the recent ruling on the so-called 'right to be forgotten' to all Google search results.
The new guidelines, issued by a panel composed of privacy regulators from the bloc's 28 member states, would require Google and other search engines in certain cases to take down links at the request of individuals in the company's search domains in Europe as well as outside the region.
Currently, a ruling by the highest court in the EU applies only to European domains, such as google.de in Germany or google.fr in France; individuals can still retrieve complete online information by using non-European domains such as google.com.
However, Europe's privacy watchdogs said this interpretation of the decision did not go far enough to guarantee privacy.
'Under EU law, everyone has a right to data protection,' the regulatory body said in a statement on Wednesday. 'Decisions must be implemented in such a way that they guarantee the effective and complete protection of data subjects' rights and that EU law cannot be circumvented.'
But regulators did not clarify if the guidelines would apply to requests made only by residents of the EU, or if people in other countries could use the ruling to have links removed.
The guidelines also raised questions about whether Europe's data protection rules - which are some of the most stringent in the world - could be enforced beyond the 28-member bloc, and if US tech companies, such as Google and Microsoft, would have to comply with the privacy ruling in their US operations.
'This is a line that US companies will be very reluctant to cross,' said Ian Brown, a professor of information security and privacy at the University of Oxford, in discussing the potential global use of Europe's privacy ruling. 'It will come down to who blinks first - the companies or the privacy regulators.'
Series of challenges
The privacy guidelines are not binding, and it will be up to EU member countries to decide how to apply them.
The decision by European privacy chiefs to expand the scope of the 'right to be forgotten' to potentially all global search results represents a blow to Google, which has tried to limit the privacy ruling to its European operations.
The search giant is already the target of an extensive European antitrust investigation into its search business in the region and will face a resolution in the European Parliament on Thursday that is expected to call for the company's break-up.
The tech company has also faced a series of global privacy challenges this year aimed at forcing it to comply with data protection rulings across all of its search operations.
Earlier this year, for example, a court in British Columbia ordered Google to remove specific results from its worldwide domains related to an intellectual property dispute in Canada. Google is appealing the decision.
And a French court said in September Google must remove defamatory articles from its global search results about a local lawyer in a case based on the recent 'right to be forgotten' decision.
On Wednesday, a Google spokesman said the company had yet to review Europe's new privacy guidelines, but that it would do so when they are published.
The 'right to be forgotten' ruling has become a major point of contention between privacy advocates, who believe individuals have the right to ask that links be removed, and campaigners for freedom of expression, who have stressed the legal decision unjustly limits what can be published online.
Compliance fraught
Since the ruling in May, Google - which holds close to 85 per cent of Europe's online search market - has received roughly 175,000 requests from people in Europe and outside the region to remove links to online material, according to the company's transparency report.
As part of the privacy decision, individuals - whether based in Europe or outside the region - must submit requests to search engines with links to the content they want removed. Submissions must show the online information is either out of date or no longer relevant, and that there is not a public interest to keep links to the content.
Google has agreed so far to about 42 per cent of the requests, according to the company's own records. And if people are not satisfied with a search company's initial decision, they can refer their submissions to national data regulators, which will make a final ruling.
But European regulators also conceded on Wednesday it might be hard to force Google and other search engines to comply with the privacy rules in jurisdictions like the United States that do not have the same privacy rules.
In a nod to this difficulty, the regulators said they would initially concentrate on 'claims where there is a clear link between the data subject and the EU, for instance where the data subject is a citizen or resident of an EU member state'.
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, November 27, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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