Month: October 2014

In the recent days, the media has reported on the case of two local officials Mr Henryk Macała from Wrocław and Mr Jacek Czarnecki, the mayor of Chełmża commune in Kujawsko-Pomorskie voivodeship. Both officials committed obvious errors while filling in their lustration declarations and both, for many years, have been trying to rectify erroneous information.

According to advocate Paweł Osik, such situations raise reasonable doubts. “A person running for public office has the right to submit a lustration declaration before each elections. The election commission, in turn, has a duty to publish a note on the content of the candidate’s lustration declaration next to the candidate’s last name,” explains advocate Paweł Osik. “As the described cases show, it is difficult to rectify erroneous lustration declarations. Discretionary character of INR’s actions in the quoted cases is very dangerous,“ adds Paweł Osik.

More information available in an article by Jacek Harłukowicz, entitled Samorządowcy źle zlustrowani. Za dużo dowolności w działaniu IPN. The text is available only in Polish.

CJEU’s judgment is revolutionary as it redefines the right to be forgotten, and yet again opens up the discussion on the right to privacy on the Internet. In its judgment, the CJEU obliged Google – as an operator of a search engine – to remove the links to web pages containing personal data of a particular individual from the search results. However, the CJEU noted that the removal from the search results should only concern the links to web pages which display information that was inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive in relation to the purposes of the processing, as well as information which was not kept up to date, or was kept for longer than necessary.

Apart from the capital of Poland, the Advisory Council to Google on the Right to be Forgotten has also conducted meetings in Madrid, Rome and Paris. The meeting in Warsaw gathered, among others, Edwin Bendyk (POLITYKA), Igor Ostrowski (Dentos Law Firm) and Dorota Głowacka (Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights).

During the meetings, the Advisory Council to Google is debating on how to set the criteria for removal of links. The matter is urgent considering that, according to David Drummond – Google’s Chief Legal Officer – as of 30 September 2014, Google has received 135 000 motions for removal.

A video from the meeting is available here.