Google and Spain in a battle over EU Privacy Law

When a man from Spain recently "googled" himself, he came across more personal information than he would have liked. Upon entering his name in to the Google search bar, the man found a newspaper article dating a couple years back which revealed that certain property the man owned was up for auction based on his failure to make social security payments. This man then brought a complaint in Spain asking for Google to remove this information from its website; essentially asking the site to make this information unsearchable. One of the highest courts in Spain, the Audiencia Nacional, upheld the man's complaint and ruled that Google should remove this information from its search results. Following this decision and a subsequent challenge by Google, the case was referred up to the European Court of Justice.

A few separate issues must be addressed by the European Court of Justice. First, the court must decide whether Google has to delete the information. Google makes a something of a public newsworthiness argument, stating that valid reasons exist for this type of information to be made public. For example, the information in this case was already made public as required by Spanish Law. Further, the original announcement which made it public in the first place still remains on the newspapers site. Finally, Google and their supporters are concerned over the ability of users to have uncontrolled power to request that information be removed from search results.

More specifically, the Court must address whether Google and can be considered a "controller" of information or simply a host of information. There is also a jurisdictional issue at play here for the Court must decide whether a company based in California such as Google can be subject to EU privacy law.

Google in this case is not making the information public. That was done already by the newspaper. Not only did the newspaper publish it in print but they also put in on their online version. All Google has done in this case is made it easier to access this already public information. The slippery slope argument being made by Google is especially persuasive in my opinion simply because this is what Google does as a business: they make things easier to find on the internet. The amount of personal information on newspaper websites which appears on Google seems endless. To give users the power to request that these results be removed seems unreasonable and impractical. Further, to call Google a controller of this data is a complete stretch of the word seeing as the newspaper is ultimately the one who could remove it from its website and thus making it near impossible to be found. Finally, not only did the newspaper find this information newsworthy, Spain itself required the publication of this information by law. Yes, Google makes the information "more public" but that shouldn't be enough to put the burden completely on Google to control this information.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/26/us-eu-google-dataprotection-idUSBRE91P0A320130226