GOOGLE LLC – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2019)

On 1 December 2006 plaintiff was arrested and charged of murdering an 8-year old boy. The first conviction was on 6 September 2007 and after multiple appeals on 22 may 2012 the final verdict was 11 years and 7 month prison followed by an involuntary commitment. The European Court of Human Rights rejected the application he made there. During the whole time, there was a lot of media coverage about this case and all proceedings. On 24 May 2015 the involuntary commitment started, and it has been extended with two years twice on 2 June 2017 and 29 May 2019. There was also media coverage about these extensions. When searching using Google search for the name of plaintiff, a lot of search results are found with publications about the crime he committed and the legal proceedings afterwards. After a request, Google removed 100 search results, but denied to remove 82 other results. It explained that with: "It is Google's understanding that the information about your client on these URL's - with regard to all the circumstances of the case we are aware of - is still relevant in relation to the purposes of data processing, and therefore the reference to this document in our search results is justified by the public interest." = The search results include information about criminal convictions and background of the crime. Based on Article 10 GDPR data processing about criminal convictions is only allowed under the control of an official authority. Data processing would also be allowed if processing is authorised by Union or Member State law, but this does not apply. Based on this, Google may not process this data. Article 32 GDPR and Article 33 GDPR also cannot justify the processing. Based on [https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?doclang=EN&text=&pageIndex=0&docid=152065&cid=244711 CJEU - C-131/12 Google Spain], [https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:HR:2017:316 Hoge Raad - 15/03380] and Article 17 GDPR a weighing of the interests