Criticism at Google’s ‘right to be forgotten’ position

The New York Times reports that crisicism is raised among European data protection regulators and politicians on Google’s secretive process for deciding whose “right to be forgotten” cases end with a stricken link and whose do not. The lack of the company’s transparency is not the only concern regarding how a private organization has autonomy in these cases instead of the government. Furthermore, Google has ruled on double the amount of national authorities’ privacy judgments. “If Europe really wanted to regain control over personal data, giving Google this type of power is an odd outcome,” concluded Oxford University’s Luciano Floridi.

The criticism is also raised as a result of a general growing discontent from both European regulators and politicians due to the fact that national data protection agencies sometimes lack the financial, technical and human resources to handle the substantial increase of “right to be forgotten” requests, according to regulatory officials and legal experts.