The EU’s advisory panel on privacy and data protection has warned Google to comply with Europe’s laws in an unusually strongly worded statement.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Article 29 Working Party<\/a>\u00a0vowed to investigate if Google refused to abide by theEuropean Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Google Spain v Gonzalez et al<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 that decreed Google was not exempt from data protection and privacy legislation on the Continent.<\/p>\n That ECJ ruling means individuals can request the removal of old and out of date links that are not in the public interest from web search engine results pages.<\/p>\n Google responded by appointing a committee of five “independent” advisors, two of whom have already called for the law to be changed.<\/p>\n In response to Google’s prickly response, the European working party \u2014 a body which is independent of the EC and represents states’ data-protection authorities \u2014 promised [PDF<\/a>] to develop “a coordinated response to complaints of data subjects if search engines do not erase their content whose removal has been requested”.<\/p>\n