EU court rules Right To Be Forgotten doesn't apply outside member states The so-called Right To Be Forgotten from unflattering search results does not extend outside the EU's borders, the European Court of Justice ruled this morning. In a 25-page judgment (PDF) the EU's top court said that the bloc's internal rules about search engine results did not apply outside its borders because there were no …
In this instance the EU court is right, even if the decision does favour the Alphabet gang. In most cases I've seen the right to be forgotten should not exist because it is being used to hide the known past behaviour of criminals and politicians criminals.
Similarly our own Supreme Court made the correct decision in finding the antics of our so called PM illegal. A PM closing Parliament so the people's elected officials can't debate and make decisions is undemocratic, illegal and nigh on treasonous.
"A PM closing Parliament so the people's elected officials can't debate and make decisions is undemocratic, illegal and nigh on treasonous."
Though oddly when John Major did exactly the same to stymie debate on the cash for questions scandal in 1997 the courts were rather quiet on the matter and St Gina Miller was nowhere to be seen. It seems justice is rather fickle and is only done when the establishment feels something is a threat to their foreign investments and french boltholes.
John Major should not have done that, either, but presumably no-one thought it was a serious enough issue to take him to court over it.
The Good Thing is that from now on Prime Ministers will not be able to shut down parliament to silence debate and scrutiny of the executive.
"John Major should not have done that, either, but presumably no-one thought it was a serious enough issue to take him to court over it."
I think that both sides of the Commons were "relaxed" about the John Major prorogation as they were both up for scrutiny over the cash for questions matter.
What an idiotic comment. First, Gina Miller wasn't around at the time to engage lawyers, due to it being 22 years ago. Second, the people wanting the prorogation are the ones who see the EU as a threat to their offshore tax havens. Lawyers are well paid at the higher levels, but not at the level of the Bankses and Rees-Moggs.
More importantly, the courts don't bring actions themselves. They need a plaintiff. In the case of cash for questions, it would need the police to investigate and the CPS to prosecute. Major pulled a scummy trick, but it would not have prevented the CPS doing its job if they thought they had a case.
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So I presume you would be very happy if Google was not allowed to link to any articles about Tienanmen Square in it's search results - maybe no articles on Wikipedia either?
I mean if the EU is allowed to make decision on what content (that in itself is legal) is allowed to show across the world then surely every country should be allowed to make demands of what Google can show around the world?
"So I presume you would be very happy if Google was not allowed to link to any articles about Tienanmen Square in it's search results - maybe no articles on Wikipedia either?"
Think you're misinterpreting this - it would just mean Google China results would omit their atrocities IN CHINA (which I’m pretty sure they do now*). That would not prevent anyone anywhere else in the world knowing the truth.
A court recognising the practical and legal limits of it’s powers is a rarity to be applauded at the moment!
* i.e. on ALL search engine results in China.
I know what the court ruling means, the reply was to the OP who seemed to indicate that the ruling should've been the other way and it was Google's money that got it swung in their favour. Hence my comment of "So I presume you ...." as in the OP.
I wonder if you were misunderstanding the reply?
Did you notice it was a reply to a comment who seemed to indicate that the court were paid off by Google and therefore I would presume that they thought Google should've lost the case (or at least felt the court were biased to the rich)?
Way to completely misunderstand what you theoretically read.
"So I presume you would be very happy if Google was not allowed to link to any articles about Tienanmen Square in it's search results - maybe no articles on Wikipedia either?"
Right to be forgotten is about privacy for individuals, so not relevant. It's a completely different scenario. So it wouldn't delist results if people typed in "Tiananmen Square". What it could do though, is if someone typed in "Joe Blogs", and the number one result for "Joe Bloggs" was that he was arrested at Tiananmen Square for protesting, then if they had "right to be forgotten", it could delist the Tiananmen result - but ONLY if someone typed in "joe blogs". The result would still appear if someone simply search on "Tiananmen Square".
Do remember the purpose of Right to be Forgotten, is to also delist inaccurate information, information that the average person cannot easily get removed. Think for a moment if someone posted something untrue about yourself - and it stopped you ever working again, as it was the number one result on Google when people searched for your name. How would you feel if you had no rights to rectify (or funds to legally fight a defamation case). How would you feel that Google and some tabloid that is known for sensationalisation and outright lies, were profiting from a story about you that wasn't entirely fair? Admittedly the test for excessive and outdated information will always be subjective to some degree. There is a much higher test for people public figures, and it doesn't even apply to events - just individuals. Anyway, there needs to be a balance for big business publishing whatever they want, and the little guy who wants to get on with his life and get or keep a job.
But your point abut the content being legal. Well maybe some (but not all of the content) is legal by itself. But the data protection that GDPR covers is also a legal requirement. Is it really that different than Google applying US copyright to the whole world. The EU has it's fault, but at least it stands up for the little guy
Google's doomsayer lobbyists had been full of shit all the time peddling annoucement of the End Of The Internet As We Know It. The law is not in fact the Orwellian monster they pretended it was, and is applied with the reasonable limits that were announced from the start.
So... what counts as "inside the EU"?
It can't be a matter of location, or else google could/would argue that its servers are outside the EU and therefore exempt.
It can't be the domain, or else everyone would use a .com domain and claim to be exempt from EU laws.
It can't be the location of the visitor, or else the EU would argue that all Google domains are covered, but only from EU IP addresses.
An issue relevant in this context is that exporting personal information from the EU is restricted by the GDPR; while Google is required to honor the right to be forgotten as such only "inside the EU" it is hard to see how search results by a person's name with hits on a server inside the EU* could be provided to a search user outside the EU without exporting personal information** from the EU.
* which is where any information about an "EU person" is likely to be
** at the minimum the name of a person at some point
The title is wrong: the Court ruling does apply to google.com, if it is visited from inside the EU.
"Thus, such a de-referencing must, if necessary, be accompanied by measures which effectively prevent or, at the very least, seriously discourage an internet user conducting a search from one of the Member States on the basis of a data subject’s name from gaining access, via the list of results displayed following that search, through a version of that search engine ‘outside the EU, to the links which are the subject of the request for de-referencing."
https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/09/24/cp190112en.pdf
From the Press Release: "Thus, such a de-referencing must, if necessary, be accompanied by measures which effectively prevent or, at the very least, seriously discourage an internet user conducting a search from one of the Member States on the basis of a data subject’s name from gaining access, via the list of results displayed following that search, through a version of that search engine ‘outside the EU [my highlight], to the links which are the subject of the request for de-referencing."
Or in practical terms, if I - detected as coming from an EU location - search google.com, it'll redirect me to google.[my-country] for results. Does that count as taking reasonable measures?
A poor solution, of course, with the horribly-broken precedent of abusing similar user-sniffing to determine what language to serve a user. But if the law demands it then it might be the least-bad.
"search google.com, it'll redirect me to google.[my-country] for results"
google.com/ncr stops that nonsense.
I'm not fussed that Google detects that I'm in France and wants to direct me to google.fr. I am fussed that it then assumes speaking to me in French even though British English and English are the languages specified by my browser.
"The ruling will be regarded as a major blow by those who believe EU laws could form a heavyweight alternative to the largely American underpinnings of internet law today. It will be welcomed by those who oppose countries that insist their domestic laws apply outside their territorial borders."
Right. Basically, barring a change of EU laws to strengthen them, only US laws will be applied by Google globally.
Maybe time to request that from my MEP, then...
Events in the British Courts have made us all aware of the word justiciable and that is the case in point with the ECJ ruling that it cannot impose it's will in organisations in other countries because it has no jurisdiction.
Common sense really - as is today's ruling from the UK's Supreme Court.
Now lets move on and go fire up our VPNs to Google .com and see what we can find out :-)
"Common sense really"
Yes.
Now all we need to do is reign in the American desire to impose their legal process everywhere, such as requesting extradition in order to apply their laws, instead of understanding that a crime committed could be handled by the competent judiciary of the country of residence of the perpetrator. But over here we tend to frown upon the confrontational method of evidence gathering, and claims of "damages" equal to the GDP of Cyprus.....
The whole philosophical weakness of the "right to be forgotten" is that the content is not illegal. In many cases it is the result of court cases and is in the public domain. This EU right is to make it extremely difficult to find such legal content using search engines.
So if the search result includes personally identifiable information, which I kind of assume it does because why want it blocked in the first place, and GDPR states that any information held on EU citizen should be subject to the regulation even if outside of the EU - isn't this a contradiction?
Being brutally honest, I haven't read the judgement and I can't be arsed, so it may have covered that because I am pretty sure the relevant powers that be would have picked up on that. But still, enquiring minds....
But this is still a point, is it not? This is a genuine question.
So PII is still PII whether that is on a specific website, or in Google's search results. That is the point I was wondering about.
It isn't about data escaping, it is about data, period. If that data sat originally on a badly secured website, or a dump of data somewhere, PII is PII regardless. GDPR won't make that distinction and whatever my personal views are, I wondered why GDPR wouldn't apply because as far as I am aware, Googles does *not* gets any special dispensation relating to that regulation.
I'd have thought that would have put the BBC in breach.
Because the whole point about making this stuff apply to Google was that journalists did it already. You aren't allowed to refer to spent convictions - but you don't have to delete them from your archive. So it's still there on the site to find, you just have to know what you're looking for.
So for the Beeb to publish a list of stuff that Google are de-listing is the equivalvent of re-running one of their archive pieces on the front page.
If you know a URL, you can view its precise contents. Craft a search so specific as to be sure to list it at the top of something. Be sure to include the term you think might be banned from searching on.
Of course that's not a complete solution. You'd also need to check whether the URL is self-excluded by the site's robot rules. And you might or might not be able to detect if the URL is doing something like serving entirely different contents to different users, thus messing with any such experiments.
It's not the URLs that are excluded as such. It's the association of a name to the URL. So if Joe Blogs was found not guilty or even guilty 20 years ago of stealing some scones from the local shop in Scouserland, then he could apply for the result to be delisted. If they agreed it was excessive and out of date, or whatever else reason - then that result would not appear when someone searched for "Joe Blogs". It could still appear if someone searched scouserland scones thief. Sounds reasonable enough to me.
At least in the context of the Internet. If the "right to be forgotten" can be rendered null by any VPN connection leading outside the EU, that right will matter less and less with time, as more and more people start using VPNs, which seems to be the current trend - not mainly because of this decision, of course, but because of privacy and other reasons.
Then the law will have to change to keep up, or society will have to change to allow people to serve their time and re-enter society. Or we'll have to decide that "once-a-criminal-always-a-criminal" and never allow people to be rehabilitated and just lock them up forever. Or maybe go the Judge Dredd route...
This is a messy compromise to solve a societal problem that's always going to be with us. It was easy to work when we just had newspapers, but the internet isn't so good at forgetting.
But then this equally applies to people's drunken misdemeanours on Facebook - and I suspect that those will be something nobody worries about in twenty years either. Because most people will have their own. So society may change so that the problem is less relevant.
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