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EU Court upholds right to be forgotten in Google search
2014-05-13 12:41:00| Telecompaper Headlines
(Telecompaper) The EU Court of Justice has upheld the right of individuals to request Google remove personal information about them from its search results. The court found that the EU's privacy directive entails the right to be 'forgotten' if personal information becomes "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed". Only an overriding public interest could justify leaving the information online. The case was brought by a Spanish man that sought the removal of an article published in a Spanish paper in early 1998 over the forced sale of his property due to unpaid social security. Google appealed an order from the Spanish data protection agency AEDP to remove the links to the articles from its search results, and the Spanish appeals court asked the EU court for an opinion. The ruling sets a precedent for a number of proposed amendments to the EU's privacy directive, such as the right to be forgotten and the extension of the rules to non-EU companies active in the territory. The European Parliament approved in March a preliminary version of a new regulation incorporating the changes, and the full directive will be considered next year by the Parliament and Council.
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Category:Telecommunications