Educational Institution
Google has been in the middle of a conflict with the European Union for nearly half a year now. This conflict was initially caused by the “right to be forgotten” legislature that was adopted in the European Parliament in May 2014. Main concept of this legislature is the right of an individual to request erasure of personal data. The conflict was later on exacerbated by the recent attempt of the European Parliament to split up Google and break off its search engine from other services of the company as a part of anti-trust activities. Even though this decision of the EU Parliament is nonbinding it still originated great concerns among internet companies around the world. The actions of the EU may seem to have only positive motives such as protecting privacy of an individual and promoting healthy competition among the internet companies; however the final consequences of these actions may actually harm regular European members of the Internet community
In the recent years America’s tech titan has been widely criticized and investigated by the European anti-trust authorities. According to James Kanter of The New York Times (2014), Europeans blame Google’s search results in favoring other Google related services and hobbling competing search advertising platforms. Moreover, Europeans are concerned with the fact of involvement of big American internet companies in “intelligence spying activities and perceived easy access to the world’s infrastructure, which was brought to light by Edward J. Snowden, the former NSA contractor” (Kanter, 2014). Even though it may seem that concerns come mostly from the EU government, public is also deeply disturbed about its privacy rights. The Washington Post article “Ungoogled” (2014) states that within two months after the “right to be forgotten” court ruling in May, more than 70,000 requests were submitted for data erasure. Since then people have been requesting to delete links to inadequate, irrelevant, or embarrassing data. The actions of the public are understandable, as everyone has the right to enjoy privacy while visiting the Web and data collection that is taking place during the Web browsing violates this right.
On the other hand, it seems that eventually “the right to be forgotten” may cause more harm than good to the European public. Google’s attempt to comply with the requests may result in deletion of important information, violation of the freedom of speech and abruption of the free flow of information. Europeans might face closed access to the information that is open to the rest of the world Moreover, this ruling may serve as an obstacle for business making in Europe. As per the letters of the US lawmakers to the EU, the pursuit of the “right to be forgotten” “would stem cross-border data flows at the expense of millions of people across Europe” and cut off the investments to the European market that have reached $2.1 trillion (Hattem, 2014). All these facts call for a need to revise the legislation and take a new approach to protect privacy of a regular European. Among the possible solutions might be a provision of access to the search engine settings to an individual after providing a valid ID to Google. In that way every user would be able to decide and set whether or how he or she would be displayed on the search results. Unfortunately, this solution brings another issue of the necessity to provide Google with personal identification and thereby disclose even more personal data. The viable solution is still to be agreed upon in the future.
All things considered, the actions of the European Union Parliament at this point seem to have strong political context and leave the needs of a regular European aside. The “right to be forgotten” should be revised in order to prevent Europeans from losing access to the information that is available to the rest of the world, but at the same time protect their privacy.
References
Fairless, T. (2014, November 25). US Expresses Concern Over Google Antitrust Debate in Europe. Retrieved December 4, 2014, from http://benton.org/headlines/us-expresses-concern-over-google-antitrust-debate-europe.
Hattem, J. (2014, November 30). EU panel calls for global 'right to be forgotten' Retrieved December 3, 2014, from http://benton.org/headlines/eu-panel-calls-global-right-be-forgotten.
Hattem, J. (2014, November 25). US lawmakers protest European plan to break up Google. Retrieved December 4, 2014, from http://thehill.com/policy/technology/225332-lawmakers-protest-european-plan-to-break-up-google
Kanter, J. (2014, November 30). EU Parliament Passes Measure to Break Up Google in Symbolic Vote. Retrieved December 4, 2014, from http://benton.org/headlines/eu-parliament-passes-measure-break-google-symbolic-vote.
Kanter, J. (2014, November 27). E.U. Parliament Passes Measure to Break Up Google in Symbolic Vote. Retrieved December 4, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/business/international/google-european-union.html?_r=1
UnGoogled: The disastrous results of the 'right to be forgotten' ruling. (2014, July 12). Retrieved December 4, 2014, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ungoogled-the-disastrous-results-of-the-right-to-be-forgotten-ruling/2014/07/12/91663268-07a8-11e4-bbf1-cc51275e7f8f_story.html?wprss=rss_opinions
