Consumer Watchdog's Simpson: Google Right to Be Forgotten Report Just Publicity Stunt
Suggestions on when a European Union citizen has the right to be forgotten were made in a report by the Advisory Council to Google Friday. Google asked the independent experts on the council to voluntarily advise the search engine giant…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
“on performing the balancing act between an individual’s right to privacy and the public’s interest in access to information,” the report said. Last year, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Google Spain vs. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos and Mario Costeja Gonzalez that Google must remove links that are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive,” when an individual’s name is searched. Google is not required to remove search results if there is an overriding public interest in them “for particular reasons, such as the role played by the data subject in public life,” the report said. While individuals have rights to privacy and data protection, there are also rights to freedom of expression and access to information, the report said. Given that links no longer appear in search results under the law, but the content still exists on the Internet, the council used the term “delisting” instead of right to be forgotten. John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director, in a news release, called the report a “self-serving publicity stunt,” since the delisting applies only to European Internet domains, not all Google Internet domains, including Google.com. Delisting “merely gives people some control over access to irrelevant information about them from the past,” he said. Simpson encouraged Google to adapt the delisting policy for those in the U.S., saying “Americans deserve the same right to be forgotten.” Google has removed about 40 percent -- 257,973 -- of the links that individuals requested be delisted, said a Google Transparency Report updated Friday. A rape victim in Germany, for example, asked that a link to a newspaper article about the crime be removed. About 60 percent of requests to remove links have been denied, said the transparency report, such as an Italian man who wanted 20 links to articles discussing his arrest for financial crimes committed in a professional capacity removed. Five of the eight members of the Google Advisory Council dissented to parts of the report. Google didn't comment.