The ANA’s letter to the FTC comes one day after Google rejected a demand by EU privacy regulators to broaden the right to be forgotten by censoring results worldwide. The French government “data protection” watch dog had ruled in June that the Mountain View, California-based company should enforce the “right to be forgotten” request it receives from aggrieved users not just in the EU domain, but across rest of its network globally.
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In its post, Google branded the French request “a troubling development that risks serious chilling effects on the web”.
However, it has limited removals to its European websites, such as Google.de in Germany or Google.fr in France, arguing that over 95 per cent of searches made from Europe are done through local versions of Google. In response, several of Europe’s privacy regulators – led by Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who heads the French data protection authority – have said that Google must remove links on its worldwide domains or face financial penalties.
“The internet would only be as free as the world’s least free place”.
While Google will now be subject to fines for not complying with the order, the amounts are relatively minimal.
“As a matter of principle, therefore, we respectfully disagree with CNIL’s assertion of global authority on this issue and we have asked CNIL to withdraw its Formal Notice”, said Fleischer.
In that case the ECJ said that although the information listed by Google about Costeja González, a 58-year-old Spaniard, was lawful and accurate, links to a 10-year-old Spanish newspaper notice about a mortgage foreclosure against him was no longer the most relevant search result.
While calculation methods may vary, this means that Google.com is used by, roughly, between 22 and 26 million French internet users – or along the lines of between 40 and 47 percent.
It was implemented in Europe following a ruling by a Spanish court in May 2014, and its introduction has pitted privacy activists against freedom of speech advocates. The EU recently launched an antitrust inquiry into Amazon.com Inc.’s e-book business and is also considering new regulations aimed at reining in the behavior of big Internet platforms such as Google and Facebook Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported.
Citing examples of how laws can vary widely between different nations, Fleischer highlighted Russian Federation and its outlawing of any speech which could be deemed to be in favour of homosexuality; legislation in Thailand that makes it an offence to criticise its monarch; and Turkey where it is illegal to utter disparaging remarks about Atatürk, the country’s first president. However, the removals have largely been to Google’s European websites.
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“We note that Google’s arguments are partly political”, the regulator added. “CNIL however relied purely on legal reasoning”, the spokesperson said.
