Google receives requests to remove ‘inadequate’ info

The firm is yet to put a process to handle the expected flood of requests in place after Tuesday’s ruling, said the source, who is not authorised to speak on the record about the issue.The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which affects 500 million citizens, requires that search services remove […]

The firm is yet to put a process to handle the expected flood of requests in place after Tuesday’s ruling, said the source, who is not authorised to speak on the record about the issue.
The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which affects 500 million citizens, requires that search services remove information deemed ‘inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant’ and failure to do so can result in fines.
‘There’s many open questions,’ Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday in response to a question about the ruling and its implications on Google’s operations.
Under the European Data Protection Regulation, Article 17 includes the ‘right to be forgotten and to erasure’.
Under Article 17, people who are mentioned in the data have the right to ‘obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data relating to them and the abstention from further dissemination of such data.’
This particularly relates to data about the person when they were a child, when the data is no longer relevant or necessary for the purpose it was collected, the person who owns the content withdraws their consent, the storage period has expired, or if it was gathered illegally.
The EU defines ‘data controllers’ as ‘people or bodies that collect and manage personal data.’
The EU General Data Protection Regulation means any data controller who has been asked to remove data must ‘take all reasonable steps, including technical measures’ to remove it.
If a data controller does not take these steps they can be heavily fined.
MailOnline has contacted Google, but the firm has yet to reveal the number of take-down requests it has received.
Google will need to build up an ‘army of removal experts’ in each of the 28 EU countries, including those where Google does not have operations, the source said.
Whether those staffers merely remove controversial links or actually judge the merits of individual take-down requests are among the many questions Google is yet to decide, the source said.
Google is the dominant search engine in Europe, commanding about 93 percent of the market, according to StatCounter global statistics. Microsoft Corp’s Bing has 2.4 percent and Yahoo Inc has 1.7 percent.
Google has some experience dealing with take-down requests in its YouTube video website, which has a process to remove uploads that infringe copyrights.