AN ACCURATE THUMBNAIL OF EUROPEAN DATA PROTECTION AND SEARCH ENGINE INDEXING?

On 8 December 2022 the Court of Justice of the EU handed down 'TU, RE v Google LLC' (C-460/20, EU:C:2022:962), a judgment exploring the critical issue of what data protection obligations search engines have when indexing potentially inaccurate data and additionally their obligations under...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cambridge law journal 2023-07, Vol.82 (2), p.232-235
Main Author: Erdos, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Case and Comment
Data integrity
Data protection
General Data Protection Regulation
Indexing
Jurisprudence
Personal information
Privacy, Right of
Remedies (Law)
Right to be forgotten
Search engines
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Summary:On 8 December 2022 the Court of Justice of the EU handed down 'TU, RE v Google LLC' (C-460/20, EU:C:2022:962), a judgment exploring the critical issue of what data protection obligations search engines have when indexing potentially inaccurate data and additionally their obligations under the same law as regards thumbnail images. This case was the fourth in a series of Grand Chamber interventions on search engine indexing and data protection which have all taken as their starting point the analysis found in the seminal 'Google Spain' judgment (Judgment of 13 May 2014, 'Google Spain', C-403/03, EU:C:2014:317) which to date has unlocked the possibility of data protection remedies in this context for many hundreds of thousands of individuals. 'TU, RE' was especially careful to build on the understandings set out in 'GC et. al. v CNIL (Judgment of 24 September 29, GC and Others v Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertes', C-136/17, EU:C:2019:773) which examined search engine indexing as regards the sensitive data rules as well as related duties when such data could reasonably be considered out-of-date. Nevertheless, as the significantly different approaches found in the judgment itself and the Advocate General Opinion highlight, the application of such an analysis and understandings are by no means straightforward. Developments to date should raise legitimate concerns that not only have the judgments here amounted to setting out a 'lex specialis' from the bench but that this exercise has been insufficiently tethered to a detailed exploration of the structure and norms found in European data protection instruments.
ISSN:0008-1973
1469-2139
DOI:10.1017/S0008197323000326