Google, by far the world’s biggest search engine, lost a court case earlier this month in the European Court of Justice that meant that European citizens now have the “right to be forgotten”. The case related to a Spanish resident whose house was auctioned off after he failed to pay his taxes. The person in in question had previously requested that links to pages that related to the house sale should be removed. Google refused and the case, along with a number of others in Spain, went to the European Court of Justice.
The ruling states that if a search for a person is made using just their name then the named person has the right to request that the link be removed from Google’s results if the page contains information on the person in question. The premise of the ruling is that an individual has the right to control data about themselves that is available online although the ruling does acknowledge that people in the public eye can be treated differently.
At the time that the ruling was made Google had no process in place for dealing with such requests but that has now been rectified. They have now added a form to their support pages that allows a person to request that specific URLs are removed from Google results for that person’s name.
The system involves completing a form that includes the person’s name, the URLs that the person wants removing and the reason, the country law to which the removal request relates and also photographic ID of the person (passport, driving licence etc). The person who makes the request does not have to be the person that submits the form but they must have the legal right to submit the request on behalf of the person.
On the page Google states that the form is just an initial effort and that they will be working with various data protection authorities to refine the process. The removal process will involve Google deciding whether a removal request is valid or not and here in the UK the Information Commissioners Office could make a final decision on a particular case. Google says that pages will start to be removed by mid-June. The removal will only apply to users who conduct the search within the boundaries of the EU, outside and the offending results will still be visible. Even inside the EU the results will not have completely disappeared, users will be informed that some results have been omitted and I suppose users will have to make of that what they want.
You can view the form on Google’s Support pages.