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France Tells Google To Remove "Right To Be Forgotten" Search Results Worldwide
An anonymous reader writes: France's data protection authority rejected Google's appeal to limit how a European privacy ruling may be applied worldwide. Since the European Court ruling last year Google has handled close to 320,000 requests, but only de-lists the links on European versions of its sites. "Contrary to what Google has stated, this decision does not show any willingness on the part of the C.N.I.L. to apply French law extraterritorially," the agency said in a statement.
If removing the results worldwide isn't apply French Law extraterritorially, what is it?
Who do they think they are? Americans?
To be fair, there is actually some sanity to the French ruling.
Putting aside the argument about whether people like the level of data protection citizens in Europe get or not, the fact is that Google breached European data protection law - that is not in doubt, that is what the original "right to be forgotten" ruling is about - I put right to be forgotten in quotes, because none of this has anything to do with the right to be forgotten, that's a new thing that's being written and not even in law yet, quite why Google and the media are desperate to get that wrong all the fucking time I've no idea, but it is what it is.
Google's breach was purely about the European Data Protection Directive and it's national implementations, given that we know Google breached European law in this area, it's also worth pointing out that Google should not have had this personal data in the first place. Under the Data Protection Directive, simply censoring it in one jurisdiction is not sufficient remedy, the law is clear, if Google is informed that it has data that is incorrect, no longer relevant, and it holds that data under no protective clause (e.g. law enforcement), then it must correct or remove this data - there's no "Oh it's okay, we've moved it offshore to America" - that in itself is illegal if it shouldn't be holding the data in the first place.
This isn't just about Google, ALL companies wishing to operate in Europe and hold personal data fall under the exact same set of rules, it's only Google that seems to have a problem with it for whatever reason. But right or wrong, the fact is that simply censoring search results jurisdiction by jurisdiction was clearly never a valid legal remedy to the problem. It's not surprising that a court has pointed this out to Google - Google needs to understand that if it wants to operate in Europe, then any personal data it holds on Europeans must be protected to the exact same standards as every other company in Europe is expected to and largely does treat it. Oddly, I notice Google puts a blanket note saying some results may be censored on ANY search for a name on Google whether results are censored or not. It's odd that they do that when say, they only list DMCA takedown notices where a search result brings one up.
Honestly, the fact Google is so alone in desperately fighting this one I'm genuinely beginning to wonder if there's some truth in the conspiracy theories about Google being an NSA data harvesting tool. The massively organised propaganda campaign it's creating on this one, whilst every other company operating in Europe manages to deal with the law without any issue is weird to say the least.
Except the page is not removed. Only the search engine's index to the page it removed. If there truly is a right to be forgotten, why is the EU not going after the source?