The Best Practice of Forgetting

In the Google Spain v. AEPD and Mario Costeja Gonzalez decision, the Court of Justice of the European Union determined that citizens of European Union member states have the right to ask search engine companies to remove certain personal information from search results. This Comment argues that the lack of specific guidance in the Costeja decision ultimately created significant burdens on citizens, search engine companies, and EU member states. To mitigate these burdens, this Comment proposes a Centralized Data Protection Agency to receive requests directly from citizens, weigh the privacy versus public interest rights, and make decisions that would be binding across all member states. This solution would make the request process easier for citizens, relieve private search engine companies from the daunting responsibility of determining legal privacy rights, and insulate member states from conflicting local implementation