[governance] Information of general interest: arret cour européenne Luxembourg, Spanish DPA against Google

[Norbert Bollow]

Lorena Jaume-Palasi <lorena at collaboratory.de> wrote:

> This is heavy undemocratic stuff, once we begin to rank some human
> rights higher than others...

Of course the court was speaking in relation to a specific context.

If in a specific context two different human rights are both relevant,
but so that each of them taken separately would lead to a different
outcome of the court case, of course the court has to consider which of
the human rights is more directly relevant in the specific kind of
context of the case at hand.

There is nothing undemocratic about that.

In this particular judgment, the court has ruled in a way that makes a
well-established (in European law) legal principle on the balance
between privacy rights and freedom of speech still effective in the
Internet age with its search engines. I personally think that this
judgment is the right decision.

It is a decision which upholds the right of the democratic countries of
Europe to define the balance between privacy rights and freedom of
expression slightly differently from how that is done in the US.

If Europe were to lose this right, that would from my perspective mean
giving in to tendencies which are (whether intentionally or not) in
their effect indistinguishable from imperialism on the part of the US.
That would imply a very severe loss of democracy.

Greetings,
Norbert

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