On June 15, 2017, the Italian Data Protection Authority, Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, highlighted how time is not the only factor to consider when asking to be forgotten. There are additional circumstances that have to be considered, like for example, the public right to information.
In this case, a senior public official requested the removal of some URL from the search results obtained by typing his name on Google. The search results contained information on a criminal case involving the Italian public official which took place 16 years before the request, and that didn’t appear in his current criminal history.
In particular, one of the search results had been published at the time of the facts while the others had been published more recently, when the subject accepted a new public role and the news incidentally mentioned the previous criminal incident.
The Italian DPA ordered Google to deindex only the URL referring to the news directly concerning the criminal offense imposed on the applicant, who at that time had a different job. The DPA deemed that, considering the time elapsed and its erasure from the criminal history of the subject, the subject had a right to be forgotten.
However, the DPA rejected the request to deindex the other URLs because they included the news of the criminal incident in a wider context, providing a wider range of information of public interest, “also considering the institutional role currently held by the applicant, who has a high-level institutional office”.
Decision n. 277, doc. web n. 6692214, dated June 15, 2017, is available at http://www.gpdp.it…
For more information on the right to be forgotten in Europe, contact Francesca Giannoni-Crystal
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