Policy Observatory
On 9 September, European and international civil rights organisations submitted an open letter (pdf) to Google’s Advisory Council on their assessment of the so-called “right to be forgotten”. The groups urge the Council’s members to avoid inadvertently delaying the adoption of the data protection reform package.
The concept of platform neutrality implies that web platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and the Apple Store do not abuse their position to the detriment of other stakeholders.
The report aims at the application of the neutrality principle and the regulation of dGoata systems. It is structured in three main parts: the opinion of the CNNum, thematic fact sheets that clarify that opinion and an in-depth economic analysis of platform neutrality. The full report is available in French and the two main parts also in English, German, Spanish and Italian.
Google seems to be reaching out of the internet and into every corner of the world. So what exactly does it want – and can it really be good for us?
The attraction of the extreme north for many tech companies is both practical and environmental. In the tiny sub-Arctic town of Lulea, Facebook has operated a 30,000 square meter server farm since 2013 -- its first such facility outside the U.S.. TeliaSonera is currently laying down Skanova Backbone North, a 1,250-kilometer (776-mile) fiber cable that will serve mobile and communications networks as well as provide the digital infrastructure that data centers in northern Sweden require. Lulea will soon host another large data facility for UK-based data-storage specialist firm, Hydro66, while the nearby town of Boden welcomed Bitcoin mining group KnCMiner earlier this year. Across the border in Finland, Google runs a similar operation in the town of Hamina.
The judgment of the Court of Justice of European Union (CJEU) of 13 May 2014 Google Spain SL and Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) and Mario Costeja González (C-131/12) sets a milestone for EU data protection in respect of search engines and, more generally, in the online world.
It grants the possibility to data subjects to request to search engines, under certain conditions, the delisting of links appearing in the search results based on a person’s name.
On Wednesday 26 November, the European data protection authorities assembled in the Article 29 Working Party (WP29) have adopted guidelines on the implementation of the CJEU’s judgment. These guidelines contain the common interpretation of the ruling as well as the common criteria to be used by the data
protection authorities when addressing complaints.
Google has agreed to about 40 percent of the requested URL removals that it has received in the months since the European Union's Court of Justice issued its ruling that empowered citizens of the EU to have search results unlinked from their names online.
Google doesn't delete any content from its search records archives completely. It simply breaks the links between searches on an individual's name and the offending results. That gives complainants the opportunity to use Google to shape their online identity while leaving the content behind those search results intact. According to the new data, Google has removed some 227,000 of those connections since it began, reluctantly, enforcing the ruling.