What would be the consequences of “forgetting” in global scale? This question summarizes one of the main challenges related to the implementation of the RTBF nowadays and raises concerns in the third day of InternetLab’s RTBF Week. In order to better understand the issue, check out the topic addressed yesterday by the RTBF Week: Europe and forgetting: implementation challenges.

The implementation of the RTBF in France and CNIL’s stance on the matter

The decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the Costeja vs. Google Spain case imposed to online search engines, like Google and Microsoft’s Bing, the processing and implementation of requests asking for the deindexation of content.

When implementing the requests Google deemed appropriate, the company limited the deindexation to the domains where the requests were originated, like Google.de or Google.fr, in a way that the results continued to appear if searches were made in domains from other countries outside Europe, such as Google.com or Google.com.br. That means you could access Google.com in France and see the results which were excluded on Google.fr. The company argued that globally enforcing deindexation would result in the violation of freedom of speech in other countries.

The French data protection authority, CNIL (National Commission of Informatics and Liberties or Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, in French), was not pleased by the way Google implemented the decision. It notified the company, requesting that the results were excluded from all of Google’s domains, that is, that these results were not shown if searches were made on all of Google’s websites worldwide.

In response, Google decided to expand the removals based on geolocation criteria of search IPs. The search results were, then, excluded to all users with the IP of the country of origin of the requests eventually accepted by Google, within the European Union. In practise, this means that a request presented by someone in Spain, for example, and accepted by Google, would result in the removal of the link mentioned in the request from all European domains of the company and the deindexation of this link in all other domains for users with a Spanish IP. That is, the users located in Spain, for example, would not see such results, even accessing Google.com.

CNIL, however, continues to deem Google’s way of implementing the right to be forgotten as inadequate, understanding that the deindexation should occur globally. This means that, when a French citizen asks for his name to be disassociated from some search results on the Internet, no one else will find them, even if the search is made using Google in the territory of the United States of America or Brazil, for example. By taking that stance, the French authority interferes with access to information in the whole world.

If the French are able to restrict the access to information about themselves on the Internet, the possibility of knowing more about them in the future becomes quite limited. Or worse: if CNIL’s understanding spreads across Europe, access to information about citizens from other countries will also be affected.

In response to CNIL’s stance, Google filed an appeal to the Conseil d’État, the highest administrative instance in France, and invited entities and specialists from around the world to present their contributions to the debate. InternetLab was also invited to speak up about the matter, submitting a statement which highlights the main points of concern regarding CNIL’s stance. Access the statement here.

Team responsible for the content: Thiago Dias Oliva (thiago.oliva@internetlab.org.br), Jacqueline Abreu (jacqueline@internetlab.org.br), Dennys Antonialli (dennys@internetlab.org.br) and Francisco Brito Cruz (francisco@internetlab.org.br).

Translation: Ana Luiza Araujo (analuiza.araujo@internetlab.org)