BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th September, 2019) The fight between the American vision of free access to information and Europe cherishing data privacy has taken another turn after the European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday against obliging Google to impose EU users' "right to be forgotten" globally.
The court ruling dates back to a 2015 row between France and Google. Back then, France's online data protection authority CNIL demanded that sensitive data be fully deleted from the Internet search engine to ensure users' "right to be forgotten."
A penalty imposed by CNIL for non-compliance was quite low (100,000 Euros or $109,880) but it was essential for Google to challenge it in court. The US tech giant turned to the French highest court, the Council of State, which then referred the case to the top EU court in Luxembourg.
EU COURT TAKES THE SIDE OF US TECH GIANT
Today, the court concluded that "currently, there is no obligation under EU law, for a search engine operator who grants a request for de-referencing made by a data subject ... to carry out such a de-referencing on all the versions of its search engine."
The judiciary, therefore, ruled in favor of Google, which had earlier expressed concerns that the decision to foist Europe's "right to be forgotten" extraterritorially would embolden other governments across the world to demand to remove search engine results that they consider wrong or politically incorrect.
The ruling also comes as the United States and France lock horns over the latter's plans to introduce a 3-percent tax on annual revenues generated in France by major online platforms - a step that obviously targets American heavyweights Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and microsoft occasionally referred to as GAFA or GAFAM.
The row has already gone as far as President Donald Trump threatening France with taxing their wine "like they've never seen before" in retaliation against the "unfair" digital tax.
GAFA REACHES QUANTUM SUPREMACY?
Next to the aforementioned problems, Google is, meanwhile, becoming incredibly powerful even compared to national governments and other executive bodies.
Earlier in September, just days before the EU court's landmark ruling, a paper by Google researchers was posted on a scientific NASA website before being removed a few hours later. The leaked paper, however, still produced the effect of a bomb as Google researchers claimed to have built a quantum computer able to perform a calculation in three minutes and 20 seconds that would take today's most powerful supercomputers approximately 10,000 years.
If confirmed, the breakthrough will certainly influence military research, the use of the Internet and social networks, as well as the consequent will of lawmakers, at least in Europe, to legislate to limit the growing power of Google and other GAFAM giants.
Google, however, does not want to antagonize the European leadership. The company has already started working on the issue, with an internal Google report showing that the search engine has removed 44 percent of the 3.3 million links from 845,501 requests received since the European Court of Justice endorsed the "right to be forgotten" in Europe in 2014.
But Google also warns about the dangers of Europe's overreach. In a blog posted at the onset of the discussions, Google declared that there should be a balance between personal data protection and public interest. The search engine operator believes that no country should be able to impose its rules on citizens of other countries.
The whole issue is also linked to the taxation of the elusive GAFA, which pays taxes not where the service is given, but where the regional headquarters are situated, pitting countries against each other for the best possible taxation deal. The matter is also related to the issue of topics that should be forbidden worldwide, such as child pornography.
In days before the ruling of the top EU court, its advocate-general, Polish law professor Maciej Szpunar, told Sputnik that "the operator of a search engine must weigh up, on the one hand, the right to respect for private life and the right to protection of data and, on the other hand, the right of the public to access the information concerned and the right to freedom of expression of the person who provided the information."
He also opined that "there would be a risk, if worldwide de-referencing were possible, that persons in third States would be prevented from accessing information and, in turn, that third States would prevent persons in the EU Member States from accessing information."
The advocate general, however, did not rule out the possibility that, in certain situations, a search engine operator might be required to take de-referencing actions at the worldwide level, albeit noting that the present situation did not justify that.
Google's Senior Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer, in turn, reiterated that his company had "worked hard to ensure that the right to be forgotten is effective for Europeans, including using geolocation to ensure 99 percent effectiveness in Europe."
According to Dominique Bilde, a European Parliament member from France's right-wing National Rally, who followed the GAFA issue in the last parliament session, the "right to be forgotten" is a correct idea and "should at least be applied by the GAFAM in Europe."
She, however, noted that the increasing power of global tech giants does require more efficient scrutiny at the EU level.
"Clearly, the large internet companies are becoming so powerful that it will be soon impossible to control them for content or to have them paying any tax. Fundamentally it is desirable to have rules applying at least to the whole of Europe for de-referencing for example, and to change the taxation of companies in the EU by charging the place where the service is given or the product sold," Bilde told Sputnik.
The European Union has, nevertheless, failed to demonstrate unity with regard to the regulation of GAFA activities, fearing either retaliatory steps by the United States or loss of their status as de-facto tax heavens.
"Obviously, not all [EU] member states have the same interests. Germany or Sweden are reluctant due to fear of trade retaliation by Donald Trump. But the countries opposed to GAFA taxation are based on more prosaic reasons: it is the fear for their own fiscal competitiveness that has pushed Ireland, Luxembourg or Malta to reject the project. As a result, the initiative, originally intended to be European, has only been French, at a very low level," the lawmaker argued.
Yet, nobody in Europe is interested in an economic war against the GAFAM or the United States, according to Bilde.
GAFA ALREADY UNDER IMMENSE PRESSURE
Pierre Vercauteren, a political sciences professor at UCLouvain University in Belgium, told Sputnik that Google's reluctance to "be tied" by EU regulations in its activities across the whole world was quite understandable.
"Trying to apply our standards to the rest of the world will create endless difficulties for the time being, if only with the USA that frowns at seeing its successful large internet companies being taxed and limited by foreign countries, by Europe in this case," he said.
GAFA companies, meanwhile, are already under immense pressure.
"The GAFAM are really under pressure, on the fiscal issues, on copyright issues, on what is done by uncontrolled Apps with the private data of the users, and now this, the right to private life, very dear to the Europeans," Vercauteren noted.
The public authorities, in turn, are "trying to adapt to the incredibly fast developments of the internet usages and the GAFAM world," with Google's reported "quantum leap" being another real challenge for regulators, according to the expert.
