Google defies France over making right to be forgotten global

Google rejected a French demand to globally apply the so-called right to be forgotten, which requires the company to remove links to certain information about users if asked.

The state’s data protection authority CNIL based its request on a last year’s ruling issued by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which ordered Google to respect people’s right to be forgotten within Europe’s boundaries. Theoretically, all any European user has to do to view the removed search results is to type Google.com into his or her Google.fr (France) search engine and then type the name of the individual in the resulting search engine box.

In a blogpost, Google’s global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer wrote that the French regulator’s request was a “troubling development that risks serious chilling effects on the web”.

“We have worked hard to strike the right balance in our implementation of the European Court’s ruling and have maintained a collaborative dialogue with the CNIL and other data protection authorities, who agree with our decisions in the majority of cases referred to them”, Google said. (The web pages themselves are not removed.) Google has approved around 1 million requests since its introduction. However, the removals have largely been to Google’s European websites.

The French are demanding that the search engine apply the recent “right to be forgotten” ruling globally, while Google insists it be administrated locally. This has been dubbed the right to be forgotten.

“If the CNIL’s proposed approach were to be embraced as the standard for Internet regulation, we would find ourselves in a race to the bottom”, Fleischer added.

As such, Google is setting itself up for a confrontation with the regulator. “In the end, the Internet would only be as free as the world’s least free place”.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the CNIL suggested that some of the arguments Google made in its appeal may be irrelevant, and that it would take up to two months to consider Google’s appeal before deciding whether to withdraw its order, or open sanctions proceedings that could lead to a potential initial fine of up to €150,000 ($165,000).

Google said in a Thursday blog post that one country should not have control over what information people in other countries have access to.

At the start of June, Google’s new European boss Matt Brittin – appointed in February – gave his first public interview.

“We noted that Google’s arguments are in part political. Moreover, there are innumerable examples around the world where content that is declared illegal under the laws of one country, would be deemed legal in others”, Google said, citing censorship laws in Thailand, Turkey and Russian Federation.