The short answer. No. Deletion takes your extract off INTERPOL's website and tells no one else; news reports, aggregator copies and the search results pointing to them remain. In the EU and the UK you have a separate right to have results for your name delisted, and the Court of Justice has held that links to an earlier stage of a case that "no longer corresponds to the current situation" must go, or the current position must come first. Outside Europe, nothing obliges Google.
What deletion changes online
Only a minority of Red Notices have a public extract, published at the requesting country’s request; the majority are for police only. A deleted notice “is immediately removed from INTERPOL’s databases”, every member country is notified within 24 hours, and the extract disappears. INTERPOL announces nothing, the Commission “does not publish decisions that contain personal information”, and the only proof is your letter. Whoever copied the extract while it was live — a newspaper, a screening vendor, a scraper site — still holds it.
What European law gives you
A right against the search engine, not the publisher. Article 17 of the GDPR, which codifies the 2014 Google Spain ruling, lets you ask Google to delist results for searches on your name; for a criminal conviction Google asks “whether it is strictly necessary” to keep the link. In GC and Others v CNIL (2019) the Court of Justice ruled on reports of criminal proceedings. The operator must weigh “the nature and seriousness of the offence in question, the progress and the outcome of the proceedings, the time elapsed” and your public role, and delist links to a stage of the case that is past. Even where a link survives, the results must reflect “the current legal position”, with pages on that point “in first place on the list”. The UK applies the same test: in 2018 the High Court made Google delist reports of a spent conviction as “out of date, irrelevant and of no sufficient legitimate interest”.
What it does not do
Three limits. Geography: in Google v CNIL the Court held that the operator “is not required to carry out that de-referencing on all versions of its search engine”, only on the member-state versions, with measures to “seriously discourage” Europeans from reaching the rest; a banker in New York or Dubai still sees the link. The source page stays up; the press has its own protection, and your remedy is to ask the outlet to append the outcome. And delisting is name-based: any other search still finds the article.
What to do, in order
Wait for the decision letter. Then file the delisting request listing every URL that appears for your name, with the decision as proof; ask each publisher for an update and each EU-based aggregator for erasure under Article 17; and check what a counterparty abroad sees.
Related
- Can my bank or employer see my Red Notice?
- Does INTERPOL tell you when a Red Notice is deleted?
- How do I find out if I have a Red Notice?
- INTERPOL — Notices: compliance and review (deletion removed immediately; notification to member countries every 24 hours) — interpol.int
- INTERPOL — View Red Notices: extracts are published at the request of the member country; the majority are restricted to law enforcement — interpol.int
- CCF — Frequently Asked Questions: the CCF does not publish decisions that contain personal information — interpol.int
- Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), Articles 10 and 17 — eur-lex.europa.eu
- Court of Justice of the EU — GC and Others v CNIL, C-136/17, 24 September 2019, paragraphs 77–79 and the ruling — eur-lex.europa.eu
- Court of Justice of the EU — Google LLC v CNIL, C-507/17, 24 September 2019, paragraphs 64–73 and the ruling — eur-lex.europa.eu
- NT1 & NT2 v Google LLC [2018] EWHC 799 (QB), High Court of England and Wales, press summary, 13 April 2018 — judiciary.uk
- Google — Right to be Forgotten Overview, Legal Help — support.google.com
Looking forward to any questions or comments that you may have! My goal is to help you, and your questions and comments are answered within one working day. And if you are somewhere in this story yourself: the assessment is free.
Ask a question or comment