The EU’s top court, in a surprise ruling yesterday, said that individuals have the right to ask US Internet giant Google Inc to delete personal data produced by its ubiquitous search engine.
Taking up a complaint concerning a Spanish citizen, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said individuals have this right “to be forgotten,” under certain circumstances when their personal data becomes outdated or inaccurate.
Specifically, this applies when such data “appear to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purpose for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed.”
This was based on the finding that under current data protection norms in the EU, “an Internet search engine operator is responsible for the processing that it carries out of personal data.”
There was no immediate response from Google, but the firm has argued that it is responsible only for finding the information.
As long as this is correct and legal, and therefore properly part of the public record, it believes it should not be obliged to delete such data, which it argues amounts to “censorship.”
The case centers on a Spanish national who went to court because the personal details of his involvement in a debt recovery operation continued to appear on the online version of a Spanish newspaper long after the legal dispute had been resolved in favor of the plaintiff.
Spain’s data protection agency, the AEPD, found that the newspaper was not at fault because the information was correct at the time. However, it upheld the complaint against Google, asking it to delete the material from its search results. When Google appealed, Spain sought guidance from the ECJ to resolve the issue.
European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding proposed in 2012 that a “right to be forgotten” be included in EU legislation on data protection to meet concerns it was not adequate given the pace of technology change.
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