French officials are not backing down on demands that Google extend its "right to be forgotten" to all versions of its search engine, but Google is unlikely to acquiesce.
France's Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL) today rejected Google's request to keep "right to be forgotten" requests as they are, and ordered the search giant to comply or face sanctions.
At issue is a May 2014 ruling from the EU High Court that said, if requested, Google must consider removing links to certain information in its search results. Google complied, but only stripped search results from European versions of its site, like Google.co.uk and Google.fr. So Europeans can conceivably switch over to Google.com and see the uncensored search results.
That makes the entire exercise pointless, CNIL said in June, when it pressured Google to delist links on all sites—including Google.com. CNIL President Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin gave the tech titan 15 days to comply, lest it faces sanctions.
In late July, Google filed an appeal asking Falque-Pierrotin to withdraw the CNIL's request for an expanded "right to be forgotten" program, saying that it would serve as a form of censorship. CNIL today rejected that request.
"If this right was limited to some extensions, it could be easily circumvented," according to the group president. "This would equate [to] stripping away the efficiency of this right, and applying variable rights to individuals depending on the Internet user who queries the search engine and not on the data subject."
"We've worked hard to implement the Right to be Forgotten ruling thoughtfully and comprehensively in Europe, and we'll continue to do so," a Google spokeswoman said in a statement to PCMag. "But as a matter of principle, we respectfully disagree with the idea that a single national Data Protection Authority should determine which webpages people in other countries can access via search engines."
In May, Google said it had processed more than a quarter of a million requests to delist URLs to more than 1 million individual Web pages. Google is not, however, wiping content from the Web, but merely stopping it from showing up in search results. Technically, the ruling applies to all search engines, including Microsoft Bing. But as the most popular search service, and the focus of the initial lawsuit that led to the ruling, Google has received most of the press attention.
This is not the first time the search giant has clashed with the CNIL: The two had a prolonged battle over the search engine's consolidated privacy policy, which eventually resulted in a €150,000 fine.
Source: pcmag.com
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