23 May 16 | Campaigns, Campaigns -- Featured, mobile, Statements
The Global Network Initiative welcomes the announcement that Google is appealing a French data protection authority ruling requiring the global take down of links to search information banned in France under Europe’s “right to be forgotten”.
We are concerned that the ruling, made by Commission Nationale de L’Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL) in March, sets a disturbing precedent for the cause of an open and free Internet, and sends the message to other countries that they can force the banning of search results not just inside their own jurisdictions, but assert that jurisdiction across the globe.
Google began delisting search content in response to the Costeja ruling in July of 2014. Search links that are delisted in response to French citizens’ requests are removed from the local French domain (google.fr) as well as all of Europe. In early 2016 the company announced that it would further restrict access to links delisted in Europe by using geolocation technology to restrict access to the content on any Google Search domain when an individual searches from France. Despite this, the French authorities continue to demand global removal of these links from all Google search domains – regardless of from where in the world they are accessed.
“We are concerned about the impact of the CNIL order, which effectively allows the government of one country to dictate what the rest of the world is allowed to access online,” said GNI Board Chair Mark Stephens, CBE. “Enshrined in international law is the principle that one country cannot infringe upon the rights of citizens of another country,” he said.
Online search engines and intermediaries are vital tools to inform public discourse, hold the powerful to account, and highlight injustice.
“The right of academics, journalists, historians and all citizens to access complete and uncensored information is the bedrock of civic participation and a free society,” said GNI Executive Director, Judith Lichtenberg.
“This ruling could set the stage for a global internet where the most censored and repressive societies will effectively dictate the standard for all humanity,” Mr Stephens said.
It is highly problematic that the authorities in one country should be able to force the global removal of search information that even if deemed inadequate, inaccurate or irrelevant under the criteria of the Costeja ruling, is arguably still lawful, and is publicly available in other countries. That same information could also be the subject of legal protections in other countries. This includes laws that criminalize the criticism of leaders and governments and laws that ban content pertaining to religious or ethnic minorities, LGBT people, or relating to women’s health.
Previous statements from GNI about the implications of the global enforcement of the ‘right to be forgotten’, can be found on website.
22 Sep 14 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Statements
The European Commission (EC) on Thursday released a “mythbuster” on the controversial Court of Justice of the European Union ruling on the “right to be forgotten”. The document tackles six perceived myths surrounding the decision by the court in May to force all search engines to delink material at the request of internet users — that is, to allow individuals to ask the likes of Google and Yahoo to remove certain links from search results of their names. Many — including Index on Censorship — are worried about the implications of the right to be forgotten on free expression and internet freedom, which is what the EC are trying to address with this document. But after going through the points raised, it is clear they need some of their own mythbusting.
1) Groups like Index on Censorship have not suggested “the judgement does nothing for citizens”. We believe personal privacy on the internet does need greater safeguards. But this poor ruling is a blunt, unaccountable instrument to tackle what could be legitimate grievances about content posted online. As Index stated in May, “the court’s ruling fails to offer sufficient checks and balances to ensure that a desire to alter search requests so that they reflect a more ‘accurate’ profile does not simply become a mechanism for censorship and whitewashing of history.” So while the judgement does indeed do something for some citizens, the fact that it leaves the decisions in the hands of search engines – with no clear or standardised guidance about what content to remove – means this measure fails to protect all citizens.
2) The problem is not that content will be deleted, but that content — none of it deemed so unlawful or inaccurate that it should be taken down altogether — will be much harder, and in come cases, almost impossible to find. As the OSCE Representative on Media Freedom has said: “If excessive burdens and restrictions are imposed on intermediaries and content providers the risk of soft or self-censorship immediately appears. Undue restrictions on media and journalistic activities are unacceptable regardless of distribution platforms and technologies.”
3) The EC claims the right to be forgotten “will always need to be balanced against *other* fundamental rights” — despite the fact that as late as 2013, the EU advocate general found that there was no right to be forgotten. The mythbuster document also states that search engines must make decisions on a “case-by-case basis”, and that the judgement does not give an “all clear” to remove search results. The ruling, however, is simply inadequate in addressing these points. Search engines have not been given any guidelines on delinking, and are making the rules up as they go along. Search engines, currently unaccountable to the wider public, are given the power to decide whether something is in the public interest. Not to mention the fact that the EC is also suggesting that sites, including national news outlets, should not be told when one of their articles or pages have been delinked. The ruling pits privacy against free expression, and the former is trumping the latter.
4) By declaring that the right to be forgotten does not allow governments to decide what can and cannot be online, the mythbuster implies that governments are the only ones who engage in censorship. This is not the case — individuals, companies (including internet companies), civil society and more can all act as censors. And while the EC claims that search engines will work under national data protection authorities, these groups have yet to provide guidelines to Google and others. The mythbuster itself states that a group of independent European data protection agencies will “soon provide a comprehensive set of guidelines” — the operative word being “soon”. This group — known as the Article 29 Working Party — is the one suggesting you should not be informed when your page has been delinked. And while it may be true that “national courts have the final say” when someone appeals a decision by a search engine to *decline* a right to be forgotten request, this is not necessarily the case the other way around. How can you appeal something you don’t know has taken place? And what would be the mechanism for you to appeal?
As of 1 Sept, Google alone has received 120,000 requests that affect 457,000 internet addresses and may remove the information without guidance, at their own discretion and with very little accountability. To argue that this situation doesn’t allow for at least some possibility of censorship, seems like a naive position to take.
5) All decisions about internet governance will to an extent have an impact on how the internet works, so it is important that we get those decisions right. In its current form, the right to be forgotten is not up to the job of protecting internet freedom, free expression and access to information.
6) It may not render data protection reform redundant, but we certainly hope the reform takes into account concerns raised by free expression groups on the implementation of, and guidelines surrounding, the right to be forgotten ruling.
This article was posted on 22 Sept 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
30 Jul 14 | Europe and Central Asia, European Union, News and features, United Kingdom
The British House of Lords has slammed the recent “right to be forgotten” ruling by the court of justice of the European Union, deeming it “unworkable” and “wrong in principle”.
The Lords’ Home Affairs, Health and Education EU Sub-Committee stated in a report on the ruling, published Wednesday, that: “It ignores the effect on smaller search engines which, unlike Google, may not have the resources to consider individually large numbers of requests for the deletion of links.”
The committee added that: “It is wrong in principle to leave to search engines the task of deciding many thousands of individual cases against criteria as vague as ‘particular reasons, such as the role played by the data subject in public life’. We emphasise again the likelihood that different search engines would come to different and conflicting conclusions on a request for deletion of links.”
The ruling from May this year forces search engines, like Google, to remove links to articles found to be outdated or irrelevant at the request of individuals, even if the information in them is true and factual and without the original source material being altered. Following this, Google introduced a removal form which received some 70,000 requests within two months.
The Lords committee recommends, among other things, that the “government should persevere in their stated intention of ensuring that the Regulation no longer includes any provision on the lines of the Commission’s ‘right to be forgotten'”.
Index on Censorship has repeatedly spoken out against the ruling, stating that it “violates the fundamental principles of freedom of expression“, is “a retrograde move that misunderstands the role and responsibility of search engines and the wider internet” and “a blunt instrument ruling that opens the door for widespread censorship and the whitewashing of the past”.
This article was posted on July 30, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
21 Jul 14 | Campaigns, Statements
To:
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin
Chair, Article 29 Working Party
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
B-1049 BRUSSELS
DG Justice
Dear Ms Falque-Pierrotin,
We are writing to express our deep concern over the effects of the so-called Right to be Forgotten ruling, issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) on May 13, 2014.
Since the ruling was issued, Index on Censorship, an international freedom of expression charity, has consistently and repeatedly expressed reservations about the failure of the judgement to include recommendations for oversight mechanisms and provisions that would ensure freedom of expression and information rights, as well as obligations, are balanced with privacy rights. We are disturbed both by the loose wording of the ruling and by recent comments from European information commissioners that appear to suggest that authorities are making a default presumption that – in the majority of cases – privacy rights trump those of free expression and right to information.
Index is concerned that without the rapid introduction of uniform, Europe-wide guidelines from regulators on the implementation of, and oversight process for, all search engines implementing Right to be Forgotten, the system will lead to swathes of information that should be publicly available being hidden from sight. This includes not just serious journalism but also information about, for example, individuals who use comment lines below articles as a form of harassment.
Index calls on Article 29 as a matter of urgency to:
• issue detailed guidance on the types of information that can be considered “irrelevant” by search engines. Simply asking search engines to have a due regard to information that is “in the public interest” is insufficient guidance;
• detail an appropriate mechanism of oversight to ensure that it is possible for data protection or other relevant national and European authorities to examine any search engines’ decision on a Right to be Forgotten request;
• include an appeals mechanism that allows publishers of content who have had links removed to be able to challenge that decision. Index understands the need to balance privacy rights with rights to information and freedom of expression rights. However, we are concerned that the recent actions of the ECJ and data protection authorities has failed to sufficiently taken into account the latter, and we would urge greater consultation with civil society groups on the implementation of this ruling and in the development of future data protection guidelines to ensure that that these rights are protected.
Yours faithfully,
Jodie Ginsberg
CEO, Index on Censorship
Copies to: European information commissioners
Letters from the Society of Editors:
Letter to Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin on the Right to be Forgotten
Letter to the Prime Minister David Cameron on the Right to be Forgotten
