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Freedom of information has been violated by the ruling that the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued yesterday in the case that a Spanish citizen, Mario Costeja, brought against Google.
<br/>The CJEU has ruled that search engines must delete links from their results if requested by individuals on the grounds that it violates their privacy, and that this obligation is valid even if the information has not been deleted from the linked site and does not contravene any law.
In the name of protecting personal data, the Court of Justice of the European Union has just enshrined a right to be forgotten that completely contradicts freedom of information, said Grégoire Pouget, the head of the Reporters Without Borders New Media desk. Internet Service Providers and search engines cannot be held responsible for online content. They are just service intermediaries for those who post the content. Trying to rewrite history by deleting Internet links or their storage is a Pandora's box that should not have been opened, because it gives a blank cheque to regimes that censor Internet content.The case dates back to March 2012, when Costeja filed a complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) against Google and the newspaper La Vanguardia after discovering that a Google search for his name produced results referring to the auction of real estate property seized from him for non-payment of social security contributions.
The AEPD rejected Costeja's complaint against the newspaper on the grounds that the information on its site had been published legally and was protected by the right to information. But it upheld his complaint against Google on privacy grounds, ordering the search engine to eliminate about 100 links from all future searches for Costeja's name.
When Google appealed, Spain's National Court asked the CJUE for an interpretation of the European law on online data protection.
In response, CJUE advocate-general Niilo Jääskinen issued a preliminary finding on 25 June 2013, in which he said that the European directive on data protection does not establish a "right to be forgotten" and that such a right cannot be used in an attempt to get search engines to suppress information.
Completely contradicting this initial finding, the CJEU ruled yesterday that search engines are responsible for the personal data displayed in their results in searches for an individual's name, even when the data is stored on other websites.
As a result, individuals will henceforth be able to use Directive 95/46 [1] on the protection of personal data to ask search engines to delete results, not because the linked content is illegal but simply because they regard it as prejudicial to their interests. And if search engines fail to comply, individuals will be able to ask relevant national authorities to enforce their request.
Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (OJ 1995 L 281, p. 31).
Photo by Robert Scoble under licence Creative commons
<br/>[1] Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (OJ 1995 L 281, p. 31).
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