European court orders Google to remove links

The European Court of Justice has ruled that Google can be required to delete links to public records even when the records themselves are allowed to remain active.

The case began in 2009 when Mario Costeja, a lawyer, objected that entering his name in Google’s search engine led to legal notices dating back to 1998 in an online version of a Spanish newspaper that detailed his accumulated debts and the forced sale of his property.

Mr. Costeja said that the debt issues had been resolved many years earlier and were no longer relevant. When the newspaper that had published the information, La Vanguardia, refused to remove the notices, and when Google refused to expunge the links, Mr. Costeja complained to the Spanish Data Protection Agency that his rights to the protection of his personal data were being violated.

The Spanish authority ordered Google to remove the links in July 2010, but it did not impose any order on La Vanguardia.

Kevin Drum, political journalist on MotherJones says:

“Generally speaking, I’m in favor of greater privacy rights, and I mostly support the EU’s more aggressive approach to privacy than what we have in America. But this ruling is troubling…If La Vanguardia is allowed to publish it, Google should be allowed to link to it.”