The Data Protection Authority, the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), has ordered Google to delist contents related people covered by the right to be forgotten under the French law not only in France but everywhere around the world. Google answers the CNIL why the company can’t agree with this decission. Google basically argues that the worldwide delisting would mean applying the French balance between privacy and free expression over territories where the French Law and Authorities have no jurisdiction.
The problem
In a landmark ruling in May 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) established a “right to be forgotten”, or more accurately, a “right to delist”, allowing Europeans to ask search engines to delist certain links from results they show based on searches for that person’s name.
France’s data protection regulator, the CNIL, sent Google in Summer 2015 a formal notice ordering the company to delist links not just from all European versions of Search but also from all versions globally. That means a removal request by an individual in France, if approved, would not only be removed from google.fr and other European versions of Google Search, but from all versions of Google Search around the world.
No country has the right to impose its rules everywhere
“The right to be forgotten can sometimes seem complex, and discussions about jurisdiction online certainly are complicated. But this issue is simple: should the balance between the right to free expression and the right to privacy be struck by each country, based on its culture, its traditions, its courts or should one view apply for all?” Google asks in its official communication published yesterday.
“Aside from anything else, it’s plain common sense that one country should not have the right to impose its rules on the citizens of another, especially not when it comes to lawful content,” Google concludes and quotes some organisations and companies that agree with Google’s position to this respect.
“We are not alone in this view. A wide range of organisations from all over the world have also expressed fears about the CNIL’s decision and its impact on freedom of speech, press freedom and the right to access information on the Internet, including The Wikimedia Foundation, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, The International Federation of Library Associations, and The Article 19 Coalition of Human Rights organizations, ” the tech giant says.
Some Data Protection Authorities argued that people could still find delisted links by searching on a non-European version of Google such as Google.com. So in March 2016, in response to the concerns of a number of Data Protection Authorities, we made some changes. As a result, people using Google from the same country as the person who requested the removal can no longer find the delisted link, even on Google.com, Google.co.kr, or Google.com.mx.
But going further, as the CNIL urges, would mean, as explained Google: “…implement French standards on Google search sites from Australia (google.com.au) to Zambia (google.co.zm) and everywhere in between. And any such precedent would open the door to countries around the world, including non-democratic countries, to demand the same global power.”
“We agree with the CNIL that privacy is a fundamental right, but so too is the right to free expression. Any balance that is struck between those two rights must be accompanied by territorial limits, consistent with the basic principles of international law,” Google concludes.
