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Google Reinstates Some Links in Europe Google Reinstates Some Links in Europe
(about 4 hours later)
LONDON — A day after a furor erupted over Google’s notifying European news organizations that certain articles would no longer appear in some Internet searches, the American technology giant has changed tack. LONDON — Google’s efforts to carry out a European court order on the “right to be forgotten” took another twist on Friday as the company restored search-engine links to several newspaper articles from The Guardian whose delinking had stirred a public furor only a day earlier.
​Google has told The Guardian that several of its articles have now been reinstated after the British newspaper complained to the search engine about the links being removed from certain European Internet searches. As Google once again declined to explain its decision-making, the episode underscored the potentially bewildering complexities of trying to remove information from the Internet when people request it.
​Some of the articles were from 2010 about a soccer referee, now retired, who had been accused of lying about why he had awarded a penalty kick in a match in Scotland. ​ Analysts and public officials, many critical of the way Google is carrying out the court order, say the tumult could have far wider implications. That is because the order, issued in May by the European Court of Justice, dealt with a right to be forgotten that would be much more broadly interpreted in a sweeping digital privacy law that is now the subject of discussions involving the European Parliament, the European Commission and leaders of the 28 member countries of the European Union.
​The turnabout underscores the difficulties being encountered in the wake of a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg that gives people a so-called right to be forgotten, allowing them to ask that links to information about themselves be taken down from Internet search results in Europe. With a new Parliament still assembling after recent European elections — and a new European Commission taking over this year — the legislation’s prospects are difficult to handicap. The one certainty, political analysts say, is that the Google controversy seems certain to galvanize lobbyists whether they support or oppose the legislation.
The seemingly arbitrary way that Google removed, then reinstated, some links, also highlights the current lack of transparency about how the ruling is overseen. The recent court decision relates solely relate to search services like Google and Bing, which is run by Microsoft. But the European privacy legislation would affect any company or website that holds European customers’ digital information. The turmoil surrounding Google’s response to the European court decision could be multiplied and magnified when other companies other than search engines — including social media providers and e-commerce sites — are compelled to respond to people’s requests that their digital data be expunged.
Under the European court’s decision, people must first make requests to Google and to other search engines for links to be removed. Only if they are not satisfied with that decision can individuals ask their national regulator to intervene to make a final decision. “The scope of the new regulation will be much wider,” said Peter Church, an associate at the law firm Linklaters in London.
The court’s ruling also did not provide guidance on whether affected websites like that of The Guardian and the BBC could ask search engines to reconsider its initial decision to remove links to specific articles. Currently, it is the responsibility of Google, and not the regulator, to decide whether links should be reinstated. The court’s ruling “only applies to people’s names in search results,” he said, adding, “The new rules apply to more than just search engines.”
Raegan MacDonald, the European policy manager for the digital rights group Access, who is based in Brussels, said that it should not be Google’s role to make a call about what is relevant. “That’s not favorable; it’s not up to a company to make that decision,” she said. It is possible, of course, that if the legislation becomes law, it would provide clarity to a process that Google seems, whether by choice or default, to be improvising as it goes along.
The British data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, which would be the final arbiter on whether the removal of links to articles from British media organizations complies with the European​ court’s decision, said it had yet to receive requests from individuals who were not satisfied with Google’s initial decision to remove links or not. In Friday’s turnabout, the company told The Guardian that several links to its articles had been reinstated in Google’s European search service after the newspaper complained. Some of the articles were from 2010 about a soccer referee, now retired, who had been accused of lying about why he had awarded a penalty kick in a match in Scotland.
“We expect them pretty soon,” a spokesman for the office said, adding that requests could start ​arriving​ over the next seven days. Google declined to explain why it had removed the links this week, or its reasons for honoring The Guardian’s request to restore them.
Under Europe’s privacy rules, Google cannot give any specific details to The Guardian, BBC or other media outlets about who asked for the links to be removed. Critics said the episode highlighted a lack of transparency about how Google is carrying out the court order as it works through requests it has received for removing information, a number that has reached 70,000 and continues to grow.
The deleted links also included those to a BBC article from 2007 by Robert Peston, the organization’s economics editor, about E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief of the investment bank Merrill Lynch, and his role in the losses the company suffered during the financial crisis. Raegan MacDonald, the European policy manager in Brussels for the digital rights advocacy group Access, said Friday that it should not be Google’s role to decide what information is relevant.
It was unclear on Friday whether links to Mr. Peston’s article had been reinstated. A representative for the BBC was not immediately available for comment. “That’s not favorable,” she said. “It’s not up to a company to make that decision.”
But in a sign that Google is wrestling with how to deal with the right to online privacy and freedom of expression, Peter Barron, Google’s director of communications for Europe, told a British radio program on Friday that the company was going through a “learning process” about how to carry out the court’s judgment. Peter Barron, Google’s director of communications for Europe, told a British radio program on Friday that the company was going through a “learning process” about how to carry out the court’s judgment.
“We have to balance the need for transparency with the need to protect people’s identities,” Mr. Barron said.“We have to balance the need for transparency with the need to protect people’s identities,” Mr. Barron said.
The requests to Google for links to be taken down are mounting. The deleted links also included those to a BBC article from 2007 about E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief of the investment bank Merrill Lynch, and his role in the losses the company sustained during the financial crisis. It was unclear on Friday whether those links had been reinstated, or whether the BBC had requested they be restored.
Around two-thirds of the more than 70,000 current requests have come from France, Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy, Google said. People in France have submitted the most requests, followed by Germany and Britain​. A representative for the BBC was not immediately available for comment on Friday, while a spokesman for Google said it was trying to comply with the recent court ruling but declined to comment about the BBC article.
On average, each request relates to 3.8 links. That would equate, so far, to a total of roughly a quarter of a million links on Google’s search results in Europe. Lawmakers in Brussels are working to complete the digital privacy legislation by next year, in hopes of phasing it in from 2017. The law would be aimed at giving Europeans greater control over how their online information is used. Any company with operations in the European Union could face multimillion-euro fines if they abused people’s data.
While many have criticized Google for what they see as censoring press freedom, the court’s decision solely related to allowing people to request that their names not show up in search results when the information is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” By expanding Europeans’ right to be forgotten, the new legislation could require companies like Amazon, Facebook and other websites that have access to personal data to remove online information if the data is no longer relevant or if people ask for the data to be erased.
For links to be removed from search results, individuals — either in Europe or potentially from outside the union — must submit requests related to specific names. The same posts, however, will still show up by searching keywords from the article — but not the individual’s name — even in European searches. Current drafts of the legislation, though, would provide certain exemptions for news outlets and research organizations, so that information deemed to be in the public interest would remain online.
All the links also remain available on search domains outside Europe, like Google.com and Microsoft’s Bing search engines outside the region. To decide what should, and should not, be removed, national courts would be expected to determine whether people have the right to ask for the information to be removed, or whether it should remain online.
While the latest ruling has been difficult to implement, Europe’s new data privacy regulation could prove even more difficult to comply with. That’s because the proposed rules, which are expected to be completed next year and to come into force no later than 2017, would allow individuals to request a similar level of online privacy from other parts of the Internet, and not just from search engines in Europe. However, the proposal includes certain exemptions for media outlets and research projects. “There’s a large challenge ahead,” Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German politician and leading supporter of the new privacy rules, said Friday.
“The scope of the court’s decision was limited,” said Peter Church, an associate at the law firm Linklaters in London. “It only applies to people’s names in search results. The new regulation will be much wider because it will apply to more than search engines.” The rules are not intended to curtail people’s freedom of speech, he said. But he added: “If someone complains, the courts must decide. They must weigh the interests of the individual against those of the public.”
That would be a more formal process than is now used in Google’s ad hoc delinking.
Under the European court’s decision, people must first make requests to Google and to other search engines for links to be removed. Only if they are not satisfied with the response can individuals ask their national data privacy regulators to intervene to make a final decision.
But the ruling related solely to allowing people to request that their names not show up in search results when the information is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” It did not provide guidance on how affected websites like those of The Guardian and the BBC could press search engines to reconsider an initial decision to remove links to specific articles. It is now the responsibility of Google, not the regulators, to decide whether links should be reinstated.
“The court’s ruling is not supposed to deal with all these complications,” said Chris Forsyth, a technology lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London.
He said the court decision had purposefully not given much guidance on how to deal with Europeans’ right for greater privacy. Referring to the data privacy legislation, Mr. Forsyth added, “That’s the aim of the new regulation.”