EU court limits ‘right to be forgotten’

Bloc’s privacy law doesn’t apply to Google searches worldwide, ruling says

The European Union’s top court ruled Tuesday that Google does not have to extend the EU’s “right to be forgotten” rules to search results worldwide.

In 2014, the European Court of Justice gave EU residents more control over what pops up when their names are searched online. The ruling required search engines to delete links to sensitive, embarrassing or out-of-date information upon request. But a French privacy watchdog wanted Google to honor those requests globally — not just within the bloc or a country, such as on France-specific Google.fr, for example.

The same court ruled Tuesday that Google does not have to remove links to people’s sensitive data beyond the EU’s 28 member states. The case offered a look into how and whether different jurisdictions and their courts can police the Internet. The EU’s “right to be forgotten” law also tackles evolving questions about whether people can demand that their data be removed from search engines without interfering with free speech and the public’s right to information.

In a statement Tuesday, the court said that “currently, there is no obligation under EU law, for a search engine operator … to carry out such a de-referencing on all the versions of its search engine.”

Still, the court said that a search engine operator has to adopt measures that discourage Internet users from venturing outside the EU to find sensitive information.

Peter Fleischer, Google’s senior privacy counsel, said in a statement Tuesday that “since 2014, we’ve worked hard to implement the right to be forgotten in Europe, and to strike a sensible balance between people’s rights of access to information and privacy.”

Those who say the rule should be extended worldwide point out that it is easy to operate outside of country-specific versions of search engines. All it takes, for example, is to hop from Google.fr to Google.com to locate information that isn’t allowed within EU searches.

Google, meanwhile, had the support of Microsoft; the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia; and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Others argued that the case could set a dangerous precedent for more restrictive governments around the world to adopt their own means of censoring the Internet.

In the United States, members of the Federal Trade Commission have called on Congress to create a national privacy law that would regulate how large tech companies use personal data. Other countries — including Canada, Chile, India, Brazil and Mexico — are considering measures of their own.

Meanwhile, Google is facing pressure from EU regulators. In March, the EU’s governing body fined the tech giant about $1.7 billion for advertising practices that the bloc said violated antitrust laws.

In 2018, the EU’s antitrust commission fined the company $5 billion and ordered it to change its practices for search and Web browser functions in Android phones. That fine followed a $2.7 billion penalty on Google for how it steered users toward its comparison-shopping site.

Legal analysts and techpolicy experts said Tuesday’s ruling applied appropriate limits on Europe’s influence when it comes to regulating the global Internet. Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said the EU shouldn’t be allowed to impose its own rules on other countries and that the bloc should “seek to strike a better balance as it crafts other laws and regulations affecting the Internet.”