French Agency Orders Google to Remove Search Results

When you think of your so much information out there , bet you would support the French.

France’s data privacy agency ordered Google to remove search results  upon request, giving the company two weeks to apply the “right to be forgotten” globally.

 

The order on Friday from CNIL comes more than a year after Europe’s highest court ruled that people have the right to control what appears when their name is searched online.

 

So far, Google says it has received more than 268,000 requests to remove URLs after the May 2014 decision. French citizens lead the European Union in requests, with more than 55,000.

 

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, president of CNIL, said the order to remove search results globally “is only telling international companies that operate in Europe that they must conform to European law.”

 

Google said it was working to comply with the EU decision, but did not say whether it would apply the French order.

 

“The ruling focused on services directed to European users, and that’s the approach we are taking in complying with it,” the company said in a statement.

 

Ms. Falque—Pierrotin specified that CNIL’s order only applied to French citizens, although she said the other European data protection agencies had agreed with the French position “to give full effect to the court ruling.”

 

Christopher Mesnooh, a Paris-based American lawyer specializing in trans-Atlantic business law, said France was among the first countries to pass laws protecting privacy.