The Data Protection Commissioner and Google have won a High Court order overturning a finding in favour of a man in the first “right to be forgotten” case in Ireland concerning internet postings. The commissioner’s decision on the complaint, which had been overturned by the Circuit Court, is therefore reinstated, he ruled. After Google refused to re-index the thread, he complained to the commissioner who found Google’s refusal to remove the URL did not contravene the Data Protection Acts. The case involved interpretation of the Data Protection Acts and of several legal decisions, including the 2014 Google Spain case which established the “right to be forgotten” – where a person can seek to have personal data held by a third party web page delisted from a data controller’s search engine. The Circuit Court had acknowledged the actual procedure followed by the commissioner was appropriate and involved assessing the appropriate criteria and the Google Spain decision.

Source: The Irish Times February 16, 2018 17:37 UTC