The European Court of Justice by a ruling-station, announced on Tuesday, compels it Google to delete personal data of citizens, if they wish, from the popular machine search for it on the Internet.
As analysts comment, the decision is a victory for the advocates of the protection of personal data of citizens in thenetwork και δεν ήταν αναμενόμενη, καθώς ο γενικός εισαγγελέας του δικαστηρίου είχε δηλώσει τον Ιούνιο του 2013 πως η Google δεν είναι υπεύθυνη για τα προσωπικά δεδομένα που εμφανίζονται στις σελίδες της και πως δεν μπορεί να γίνει επίκληση του «δικαιώματος στην (ψηφιακή) λήθη» σε ό,τι την αφορά.
The decision obliges the company to delete links that lead to information and personal data, which are no longer valid or do not concern anyone but the specific person to whom they refer.
Το δικαστήριο έκρινε ότι, σύμφωνα με την ευρωπαϊκή νομοθεσία, οι πολίτες έχουν το δικαίωμα να διαχειρίζονται οι ίδιοι τα προσωπικά τους δεδομένα, ιδίως αν δεν είναι δημόσια πρόσωπα. Αν οι ίδιοι επιθυμούν, να διαγραφούν από τα αποτελέσματα των μηχανών αναζήτησης στο Διαδίκτυο, λανθασμένες πληροφορίες ή data που «δεν αφορούν κανέναν άλλον», έχουν το δικαίωμα να το ζητήσουν, ακόμα και αν οι πληροφορίες έχουν αναρτηθεί νομίμως.
According to the court, citizens "can send their request to the search engine officer, who has to examine it thoroughly."
The company's response will depend on "the nature of the information that the citizen asks to be deleted, the extent to which it affects the privacy of the individual and the extent to which it affects the wider public," as the court notes in his ruling.
Google should delete the links referring to the pages containing the particular data "unless there are special reasons, such as the role played by that person in public life, and whether the wider public is very interested in access to that information ".
Google announced that it is studying the decision, which it described as "disappointing."
This case started with 2001 when Spain's Privacy Authority ordered Google to remove electronic links to more than 100 published articles on the internet, which were considered "potentially defamatory." In the Spanish court, 200 had been appealed in total, as the Associated Press reports.
The case, which came to the European Court of Justice, concerns Mario Costeha Goncallet, who appealed to the Spanish Data Protection Agency when an old auction notice of his home for debt, which was later regulated, appeared in the results of Google's search engine.
Google, for its part, appealed against the decision of the Madrid court, which forwarded the case to the European Court of Justice.
It is recalled that the judgments of the European Court of Justice are binding on the whole of the European Union.
The European Data Protection Guideline, adopted by 1995, is now being revised to tighten up the rules.
From 2012, the European Commission has proposed to allow every citizen to personally remove his or her data from online search engines.
