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Slippery Google greases up, aims to squirm out of EU privacy grasp

Will the huge advertising firm manage to spin its way free of the law?

Special Report Google is wriggling desperately to escape new European privacy rules that could force it to take some responsibility for what information it republishes in response to a given search – in particular a search of someone's name.

The European Parliament voted in favour of data protection reforms in March, which the EU's press office proudly proclaimed was "irreversible". But they may not be cemented in place if Google gets its way. The process is still open to amendments – and there's one amendment in particular that the Californian advertising giant would urgently like to add.

This involves removing the right of ordinary citizens to ask for irrelevant data that isn't in the public interest to be deleted from search engines. Google may find its long history of arrogance and disdain in dealing with European authorities a handicap here, no matter the amount of friendly commentary it manages to plant in the Anglophone media regarding the issue.

Last month the European Court of Justice ruled that Google was subject to European data protection laws – and must therefore take account of an individual's fundamental right to "a private life" – expressed in Article 8. The Court carefully explained that this was not some absolute "right to be forgotten", but had to be balanced against the public interest to know. The links to be removed would have to be old and irrelevant, and magnified by the search engine's reputational power into something unfair.

Sources suggest that Google will wait until an independent council of European data protection bods complete a review of the reforms - they met last week - before making its move. This process is called the Article 29 Working Party.

Why does Google care? It's a telling question. The gigantic advertising company can begin bouncing link-removal requests from citizens to the Information Commissioner's Office right away. Then Google can - if it's as serious as it claims to be about preserving its search results - appeal each and every ruling made by the ICO in favour of complainants. The multi-stage legal procedure takes around 18 months. So by around 2017 we could have a decent track record from which to decide whether a tweak to data protection legislation in Europe actually needs to be made.

But Google doesn't want that. It wants to be completely exempt from the law, and it wants to be so as soon as possible. The ads giant has launched a broad-based PR campaign pushing to "change the law", creating a false impression that it's being asked to make difficult decisions in vast numbers (in fact courts ultimately decide, not Google), and that the situation is burdensome for it (when in fact it can bounce all the complaints to the data protection registrar, and wait for the legal system to do all the work).

Google has announced a hand-picked team of five "advisors" with which it would consult on this matter. One of them, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales (who now lives in the UK), appeared on TV recently to give a highly misleading interpretation of the ECJ ruling - one which flatly contradicted the text handed down by the court. Sadly, he did so without challenge from the BBC host, Andrew Marr, who introduced him as "one of the internet's undisputed legends" and "founder of the era-defining encyclopaedia, Wikipedia".

In fact, the CJEU ruling states that the decision will indeed be left to the courts and judges. In plain English, the Court explained:

The Court points out that the data subject may address such a request directly to the operator of the search engine (the controller) which must then duly examine its merits. Where the controller does not grant the request, the data subject may bring the matter before the supervisory authority or the judicial authority so that it carries out the necessary checks and orders the controller to take specific measures accordingly ...

Wales was dissembling when he claims Google is being forced to make ethical interpretations typically made by judges.

Academics are also helping to lobby for Google's desired change in the law. In an interview with us, another of Google's five Advisors on the issue, Professor Luciani Floridi, also called for changes to the law. But he declined to suggest what kind of change that might be.

"To be honest I do not know why Google has taken the steps it has taken to putting that form online and organising that advisory committee," Florini told us. But everything pointed to a legal change.

"Some improvements could be made," Floridi told us. "The current legislation we have is a bit strained."

How, exactly?

"I'd really rather not comment."

We now have two of the five advisors Google appointed pressing for a change in the law - and long before 2017, when lawmakers could consider a Europe-wide change in the law on the basis of real evidence.

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