Can Google Beat the EU?

I hope Google can win this one, a fight over how far the EU - or any country - can extend their rules for the Internet.  The Wall Street Journal today lays out the arguments for Google which is challenging the "right to be forgotten" rules of the EU.  Google has a lot of experience with the laws of different countries.  China tried to enforce its own laws of censorship on Google- all over the world.  That resulted in China calling for data originated in China to be stored in China, another larger issue that eventually needs to be addressed (Microsoft had a similar case with the US Justice Department over email).  If Google wins this one, the EU will be flabbergasted.

I wrote about this 7 years ago because it is difficult to see how a country, or the EU enforce data requirements on users who are external to their state boundaries.  In that context, I was talking about clouds, which can store data in any country and not just their country of origin.  Long-haul communications have not been very cognizant of jurisdictional borders, choosing to not ask permission but apologize later if caught.  I studied this in Defense with encryption rules for countries that are transited by communications that are encrypted.  Some countries are claiming they want to see this data and not allow it to go through encrypted.  Some want to have access to everything transiting their country.  Good luck with that.  I don't want my encrypted data being read by somebody in another country claiming domestic authority to do so.  I don't want my service provider giving them that data without any notice to me.  Good luck with that one too.

Vodaphone produced a report several years ago that laid out all these conflicting rules and named names (except China and the US) of countries that make demands on telecoms to access phone calls inside their countries.  The current Google matter is simple compared to the multitude of countries out there that have conflicting rules, but it is a start.  We need to support Google in this to limit the overreach of the EU.