Germany’s top court handed down its first ruling since the EU’s GDPR laws went into effect in mid-2018. The court “sided with Google and rejected requests to wipe entries from search results,” reports German public broadcaster DW (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo):
The cases hinged on whether the right to be forgotten outweighed the public’s right to know…
In the first case, a former managing director of a charity had demanded Google remove links to certain news articles that appeared in searches of his name. The articles from 2011 reported that the charity was in financial trouble and that the manager had called in sick. He later argued in court that information on his personal health issues should not be divulged to the public years later. The court ruled that whether links to critical articles have to be removed from the search list always depends on a comprehensive consideration of fundamental rights in the individual case.
A second case was referred to the European Court of Justice. It concerned two leaders of a financial services company that sought to have links to negative reports about their investment model removed. The couple had argued that the US-based websites, which came up in the searches for their names, were full of fake news and sought to market other financial services providers.
This is the first ruling by Germany’s top court since the EU’s general data protection regulation came into effect in 2018. It gives EU citizens extensive rights to demand corporations immediately delete personal data.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot