In mid May, the EU ruled in favor of a Spanish man who wanted to have links leading to undesirable information about him removed from Google search results.
This judgment was made under a "right to be forgotten" statute and has been rolled into a 1995 European Data Protection Law. The court in essence said that the right to privacy for individuals trumped general public interest. The ruling also standardized data protection laws across the EU's 28-member nations, making it more difficult for companies to set up shop in what are perceived to be less stringent countries.
As a result, Google has now made available through its website a form for those wanting to have links to their names removed from Google search results.
Left unclear at the time was whether non-European-based companies would be required to play by the new rules. But today, EU ministers have decided that companies such as Facebook and others with offices outside of the EU must also conform with EU "right to be forgotten" regulations, when their Internet activity impacts EU citizens and businesses.
"All companies operating on European soil have to apply the rules," said EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding. She spoke at a meeting in Luxembourg at which ministers agreed to work with the EU Court of Justice on the ruling.
Much of the actions taken by EU ministers and courts appear to have stemmed from the backlash over the revelations of U.S. cyber-spying on European leaders and businesses. The discovery that the U.S. government operated an extensive electronic espionage program, even tapping the mobile phone of German chancellor Angela Merkel, has fostered a mix of paranoia and indignation among Europeans, although to some degree surveillance programs are practiced by European nations as well. Vodaphone, based in United Kingdom, is the world's second largest mobile phone company. They recently confessed that surveillance on telephone calls has occurred on their network. Ironically, six governments have now admitted to tapping Vodaphone's network.
The devil will be in the details, and at the moment an enforcement protocol has yet to be firmly established. It may take some time before laws and regulations have been codified that allow EU countries to fairly cement legal authority over a wide net of businesses that cross many geographical and legal boundaries.
Since making the web form available, Google has received over 12,000 requests "to be forgotten." However, this number pales in comparison to URL removal requests they handle over alleged copyright infringement - over 24 million in the past month alone.
