BRUSSELS -- Google is moving to comply with a three-week-old European Union court ruling that backs the right of citizens to be forgotten online.
Google has devised an online form that Europeans can fill in to request deletion of their online information.
It has also created a committee of Internet experts, including Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, to advise it on how to respond to the May 13 decision from the EU's top court, which said people may ask search-engine owners to remove personal information and have a court or data- protection authority step in if the companies don't comply.
"It was about time" Google took measures to comply with European data-protection laws that have existed since 1995, Viviane Reding, the EU's justice commissioner said in an emailed statement. "The move demonstrates that fears of practical impossibility raised before were unfounded."
The right-to-be-forgotten ruling was a surprise for companies already bracing themselves for a clampdown on privacy in the 28-nation EU as the bloc seeks to increase the powers of data-protection watchdogs to impose fines for violations. Revelations of widespread U.S. spying on EU citizens, including top politicians such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have added to the clamor for extra privacy safeguards.
Larry Page, Google's chief executive officer, said the ruling may encourage repressive regimes seeking to censor the Internet, according to an interview in the Financial Times.
"It will be used by other governments that aren't as forward and progressive as Europe to do bad things," the newspaper quoted him as saying. Al Verney, a spokesman for Google in Brussels, confirmed Page's comments.
The court decision creates extra headaches for U.S. Web companies, which have businesses based on handling tremendous amounts of data that often aren't touched by humans. It paves the way for European users to flood the firms with Web takedown requests, adding to costs.
The right to be forgotten and the right to free information "are not foes but friends," Reding said. "It's not about protecting one at the expense of the other, but striking the right balance in order to protect both."
"The European court made it clear that two rights do not make a wrong and has given clear directions on how this balance can be found and where the limits of the right to be forgotten lie," she said. "It is mass surveillance not data protection that legitimizes the actions of repressive regimes."
The EU's move toward tougher rules may make it harder for Internet startups, according to Page's interview.
"We're a big company and we can respond to these kind of concerns and spend money on them and deal with them, it's not a problem for us," he told the newspaper. "But as a whole, as we regulate the Internet, I think we're not going to see the kind of innovation we've seen."
The new special committee has five members, including Wikipedia's Wales, Frank La Rue from the United Nations, Peggy Valcke of the University of Leuven law school, academic Jose Luis Pinar and Oxford University's Luciano Floridi.
Floridi said that the committee would evaluate the ethical and legal challenges posed by the Web, "which will probably require some hard and rather philosophical thinking."
The EU ruling requires Google to make "difficult judgments about an individual's right to be forgotten and the public's right to know," Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said.
The European top court was wrong to force Google to take on the role of "cyberspace's policeman, since from a technical point of view it's an impossible task to remove every single link," Domenico Colella, a lawyer at Orsingher Ortu in Milan, said.
The EU court ruling stemmed from Google's challenge to an order by the Spanish data-protection authority for it to remove information on a man whose house was auctioned off for failing to pay taxes, one of 200 instances where Spain has asked Google to pull content.
Spain's data agency "welcomes that Google finally responds to what we have been demanding for several years -- and makes available to citizens a tool to communicate and resolve potential damages to their rights caused by the search engine when it disseminates personal information without any relevance or public interest," Jose Luis Rodriguez Alvarez, head of the authority, said in an emailed statement.
Germany's privacy watchdog criticized Google's request for photo-identification documents to authenticate a user's request, saying private companies weren't allowed to store scanned copies of ID cards and passports under German law.
People should avoid sending such scans and should black out unnecessary details, it said. It was "unfortunate" that Google hadn't discussed with Germany how to implement the ruling, the regulator said in an emailed statement.
Google can accept other forms of identification, including a utility bill, if a person has concerns over photo ID, the company said in an email.
European privacy officials will discuss the consequences of the EU ruling this week, French and Luxembourg authorities said.
Information for this story was contributed by Gaspard Sebag, Andrea Gerlin, Daniele Lepido and Kenneth Wong of Bloomberg News.
Business on 06/02/2014