Opinion.

Enforcing the "right to be forgotten"

16/11/2015

At a glance

The expected fallout from the European Court of Justice’s ruling on “the right to be forgotten” has not come to fruition. Many commentators predicted that the decision in Google Spain SL and Google Inc v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) and Mario Costeja González (Case C-131/12) would lead to a barrage of complaints and have a major effect on the way search engines work. However, the latest reports from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) suggest that the impact of this decision has been far from revolutionary.

In detail

The “right to be forgotten” is a slightly misleading term. In reality, it refers to the right for EU citizens to request internet search engines to remove results in response to a query for their name, if those results are inadequate, inaccurate, irrelevant or no longer relevant. If the request is rejected by the search engine, individuals can complain to their relevant national data protection authority (such as the ICO) which will be responsible for making, and enforcing, a decision.

In a recent blog post, “Has the search result ruling stopped the internet working?” , the ICO reported that, 18 months later, it receives a fairly consistent 25 to 45 cases per month, of which 60% are eligible for an ICO decision (the others, for example, do not involve personal data or fall outside the UK jurisdiction of the ICO). In only 20% of those cases, the decision of the ICO has required the search engine to delist the search results pertaining to the individual. It claims to have disagreed with Google in around a third of the cases it has ruled on.

In each case, it will be a question of balancing the individual’s right to privacy against the interest of the general public having access to that information, and it will be interesting to see how the ICO continues to implement and enforce this area of law as it evolves.

Sophia Costley

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