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An advisory council created by Google to debate the EU's right to be forgotten ruling has concluded it should not be applied globally. But privacy experts have warned that Google is deliberately undermining the law to make it sound controversial.

The conclusion of Google's council goes against the view held by EU regulators who feel that the right to be forgotten should apply to all versions of Google. In November the Article 29 Working Party said search engines should censor results worldwide due to the fact it is so easy to access Google.com in Europe.


Eerke Boiten, senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Kent, told WIRED.co.uk that Google's main aim was to make the EU ruling sound more controversial than it is. "Google aims at a minimal compliance with the letter of the law in the short term, and to undermine it in the longer term," he said. "To do so, they stir up the most controversy about this law that they think they can legally get away with."

Google and the EU have been at loggerheads over the ruling since it was implemented last May. It remains to be seen if individual privacy regulators in Europe will try and force Google to implement the right to be forgotten globally, as EU watchdogs have recommended.

The search giant has aggressively argued that the EU ruling should only apply to its European websites such as Google.es or Google.de. While agreeing with Google that the right to be forgotten should not be expanded globally, the council's 44-page report was critical of how the company processed removal requests.

Google aims at a minimal compliance with the letter of the law Eerke Boiten, senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Kent


The report argued that notifying the publisher of a website when a search result was removed limited how effective the ruling could be. Currently Google informs websites when a specific page has been removed from search results. Websites including the BBC, Guardian and Wikipedia have responded by publishing lists of articles that have been removed from search results.

The council also said the right to be forgotten should consider the "harm" caused by search results when a removal request is made. Jon Baines, chairman of the UK's National Association of Data Protection Officers explained that this approach was "not a valid reading of the ruling". The right to be forgotten, he pointed out to WIRED.co.uk, stipulates that search engines should comply with removal requests for results that are "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive".

Baines said the report could become "one of the key lines drawn" during any forthcoming legal battles between Google and the EU. He added that there were "profound" differences between the two parties and the report had further highlighted this. "The council are, I am sure, disagreeing because if they can restrict [the right to be forgotten's] reach to Europe, and only to cases where not de-listing would lead to harm, they would greatly reduce the impact on them as a business."