Condemned by the CNIL on the right to be forgotten, Google before the Council of State – The Express

Is the CNIL responsible for decisions in other countries than France? According to Google, no. The US web giant disputes before the French Conseil d’Etat his conviction by the CNIL (French Data Protection Authority), 100 000 euros fine in March. The Commission criticized his refusal to comply systematically to promote the right to be forgotten Internet users.

Clearly, Google refused to dereference information on all extensions of its search engine. If the American giant before the Council of State, this is not to contest the charges, but because he doubted the competence of the CNIL, outside France.

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The right to be forgotten, on the bottom of this, was dedicated in in May 2014 by the Court of justice of the European Union (CJEU). The instance wished grant, under certain conditions, to its citizens, the ability to see their names and identities delisted from search engines via a form indicating the links of the targeted sites. The knowing that the offending pages will still be available by searching with other keywords.

51% of requests honored

Google has made available this form and would have received over 92 200 applications in France for some 306,200 web pages . The search engine said to have delisted 51% of them. But CNIL criticized for not having done away with the results of research from the European expansion of its website: google.fr google.it in France or in Italy, but not google.com, the main address engine or its variations outside Europe. The authority believes that the right to dereference should not vary according to the geographic origin of Internet users. The engine has also recently added a geographic filtering dereference on European versions of its search engine. Thus, in 99.9% of cases, users based in France can no longer access the disputed results. Hence the condemnation of Google in March.

Google Legal Director for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Yoram Elkaim, reacted on Thursday: “The CNIL, as the national authority in France has not this power, by French law, to impose measures outside its borders. ” “This is not a debate on the right to be forgotten-and besides we do not put in the cause-is really a more general discussion on extraterritoriality, the availability of content in the world “has he said.

“The principle of territoriality”

To justify himself, he made international examples: “For years, we resist similar requests in less democratic countries who ask us to remove content globally because they violate local laws: Turkey with such a law that forbids denigrating (the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey) Ataturk Thailand which prohibits any criticism of the king … “added Yoram Elkaim. “These rules then apply in their territory, but they can not dictate what the French Internet users can see or not,” he added.

“It’s important to keep these principles there. And if tomorrow we apply the decision of the CNIL global way, one will be much weaker position to continue to defend the principle of territoriality in these other countries where we are asked to remove content, “said Yoram Elkaim. This Thursday, the CNIL declined to comment. A spokesman for the Commission only reminded that Google is within its rights by appealing. The State Council should not make its decision within a year.