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

[Norbert Bollow]

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

> The court has stated a precedent and the balance it makes is based
> on the assumption, the right to privacy is higher ranked. It does not
> assume that both rights are equal and that there needs a balance.

You're IMO mis-reading the judgment. 

Let's be specific.

The court says that in regard to facts about a person's personal life
that are (at a given time) not of significant public interest and which
the person does not wish to be immediately found by means of a Google
search for their name, the right to privacy is higher ranked than the
economic interest of Google (of course, since economic interests
and rights of corporations are by definition ranked lower than human
rights) and the rights of the public to access information (which are
a logical consequence of a human right, so that is a serious point.)

The court also explicitly says, as the final sentence of the ruling:
“However, that would not be the case if it appeared, for particular
reasons, such as the role played by the data subject in public life,
that the interference with his fundamental rights is justified by the
preponderant interest of the general public in having, on account of
its inclusion in the list of results, access to the information in
question.”

There you have it, depending on the circumstances (the particular legal
implementation in EU law of) one or the other human right is to be the
determining factor.

The scope of application of (the particular legal implementation in EU
law of) of one human right is determined by (the particular legal
implementation in EU law of) the other human right, and vice versa.

One human right balanced by the other.

Just like things should be.

Greetings,
Norbert

-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t