The European Court of Justice by a ruling-station, announced on Tuesday, compels it Google to delete personally data citizens, if they so wish, from its popular Internet search engine.
Analysts say the ruling was a victory for Internet privacy advocates and was not expected, as the court's attorney general said in June 2013 that Google was not responsible for the personal data displayed on pages and how the "right to (digital) oblivion" cannot be invoked as far as it is concerned.
The decision obliges the company to delete links that lead to information and personal data, which are no longer valid or do not concern anyone but the specific person to whom they refer.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 right to manage their personal data themselves, especially if they are not public figures. If they themselves wish, to be deleted from the results of the machines searchς στο Διαδίκτυο, λανθασμένες πληροφορίες ή data that "do not concern anyone else", have the right to request it, even if the information has been posted legally.
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 decisions of the European Court of Justice are binding for the whole of Europe Unions.
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.
