Google Appeals French Order For Global 'Right To Be Forgotten' (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet Inc's Google appealed on Thursday an order from the French data protection authority to remove certain web search results globally in response to a European privacy ruling, escalating a fight on the extra-territorial reach of EU law. In May 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that people could ask search engines, such as Google and Microsoft's Bing, to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results appearing under searches for people's names -- dubbed the "right to be forgotten." Google complied, but it only scrubbed results across its European websites such as Google.de in Germany and Google.fr in France, arguing that to do otherwise would set a dangerous precedent on the territorial reach of national laws. The French regulator, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL), fined Google 100,000 euros ($112,150.00) in March for not delisting more widely, arguing that was the only way to uphold Europeans' right to privacy. The company filed its appeal of the CNIL's order with France's supreme administrative court, the Council of State. "One nation does not make laws for another," said Dave Price, senior product counsel, Google. "Data protection law, in France and around Europe, is explicitly territorial, that is limited to the territory of the country whose law is being applied." Google's Transparency Report indicates the company accepts around 40 percent of requests for the removal of links appearing under search results for people's names.

Comments

Radical idea: My data is NOT google's property

[shanen]

The root of this problem is the death of privacy. Especially amusing as the chief killers of personal privacy are most prominently self-proclaimed "conservatives" trying to conserve the profits of large companies. They profit by treating us a mindless sheep following the carrots of our personal interests and even strengths.

If our personal information was OUR property, then we should be entitled to store it where WE want to keep it, even if that was a place that the google could not conveniently copy. The legal default should be NO ownership of other people's personal information. The only exception I can think of is where several people are involved, in which case each of them should properly have a copy of the transaction AMONG themselves.

If you start from that perspective, then the entire situation looks very different. If owning another person's personal information without their permission was a crime, then you don't have to create a bizarre right to be forgotten (which is fundamentally impossible because you have to remember what to forget) and you can just go after the criminal who is publicizing your STOLEN personal information.

So what is the chance of fixing the problem? ZERO. The google profits are just fine the way things are and they are NOT going to allow any major changes.

Remember, "All your attention are belong to us [the google]."

P.S. I'm aware of the sticks of negative personal information, but it is quite obvious and gets plenty of discussion. The carrots are actually more dangerous.