A network of specialists is being drafted in to help EU data protection authorities manage complaints made by individuals who have requested and be denied the deletion of search results which identify them. A digital dashboard is being created to manage the process as agreed during a plenary meeting of the Article 29 working party which includes representatives from all of the EU national data protection authorities. These representatives discussed the impact of the May ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that gave individuals the right to insist that search engines remove any search results in Europe for queries that include their names if those results are “inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant, or excessive.”
During the summer a number of complaints had been received as a result of search engine owners’ refusals to remove complainants details from their results which to some equated to the confirmation that there is a genuine demand for data protection. For this reason the new network will be able to access a centralised record for reference , via the dashboard, of how complaints have been dealt with in order that there is a consistent approach.
Google had received over 100,000 “right to be forgotten requests” by September 9th and its own team is beginning to implement the ruling. The business has also toured Europe to discuss the ruling with experts to gather opinion on whether it should be responsible for removing links to offending content or if that should remain the responsibility of the original publisher.
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