International Law

Working Group Opinion on Search Engines

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

As noted at EU Law Blog, the EU Working Group on Data Protection has published an opinion on data protection law regarding search engines.

They say that the Surveillance Directive (data retention Directive 2006/24) does not give search engines any rights to store search histories, because these are not traffic data, but content of the communication, which may not be retained under Art. 5 (2).

I agree with this result.

However, a search engine is retaining contents of a communication of which it is a party. If someone sends a query to Yahoo, they are not using Yahoo to convey a signal to a third party. They are conveying the signal to Yahoo. Therefore, as the opinion noted correctly, the 2002 telecommunications data protection Directive is not applicable to search engines. That means that the 2006 Surveillance Directive is not applicable either, since that Directive amends the 2002 Directive.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on April 26, 2008 (boomark / email).