Slashdot Mirror
No "Right To Be Forgotten," Says EU Advocate General
DW100 writes "A ruling this morning from the European Court of Justice has said that Google does not have to delete personal data from its search index, in a case that could have huge ramifications for web privacy and the so-called 'right to be forgotten.'"
From the article: EU Advocate General Niilo Jääskinen "said Google and other search engines are not subject to privacy requirements under current European data protection law. 'Search engine service providers are not responsible, on the basis of the Data Protection Directive, for personal data appearing on web pages they process,' he said in his official ruling, published by the court. He went on to explain that based on current laws citizens do not have a right to be removed from search indexes within the framework of the Data Protection Directive. 'The Directive does not establish a general "right to be forgotten." Such a right cannot therefore be invoked against search engine service providers on the basis of the Directive,' he said."
. . . .immediately think, ". . . all the better to data-mine you by. . . ."
Now if only they'd stop messing too much with Google (apart from tax issues) and rescind the need for stupid "We're using cookies" splash screens then we'd all be happy Europhiles.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
customer : Hello, i'd like my data to be deleted from your search engine...
Google : foggetaboutit!
Where google is becoming more capone by the day....
This is not the right to be forgotten, it is something completely different. The right to be forgotten means that you can ask Google to delete data you gave to it yourself, e.g. your Gmail account a G+ profile. It does not have anything to do with removing search results.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The opinion of the Advocate General is a preliminary document, a recommendationn, not a ruling of the Court. A recommendation to the European Court that is often followed by the Court. Legal grounds is the current EU directive, a directive that is implemented in national laws and provides a level of minimum harmonisation across EU member states. There may be other legal grounds. Currently the entire EU data protection legislative framework is under reform.
I would bet money that eventually Google's servers will be attacked by someone who wants to wipe themselves off of the servers.
Maybe the Russian mafia or the Chinese will offer a service to do just that for a price.
We all have the right to remember things and discuss them. A "Right to be Forgotten" is an attack on the peoples freedom of thought. It is censorship used by the rich and powerful to hide their crimes. It is an attempt to avoid public shaming.
The ruling is entirely reasonable (at least to the extent that I understand the European law). The answer is to amend the law so that it does include the right to be forgotten, except for non-trivial things (e.g. a paper that you've published, or news articles, especially about public figures). We need such a law in the US too, but I don't see how the Constitution requires it (which doesn't mean you can't have a law, especially in light of the 9th Amendment).
A search engine is also the last party that should be responsible for this. It's utterly unreasonable to ask them to judge whether such a requirement is applicable to every page they index. The "publisher" of the page is the one that should be responsible.
How else will people find the sites that have not forgotten ?
What if you send Google a Cease-and-Desist letter? You won't be the only one who does this, and you would have more right to do so than others.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
FFS, you have the UK cooperating with a foreign power on a massive surveillance operation against UK and Europe. Pick your battles here. The basic right to privacy is in tatters, the basic right to due process is in tatters, we can't even have a democracy because USA leaks smears against politicians it wants out of power (mostly French it seems).
Get a f**ing grip, and pick the battles worth fighting. You can't extend the right to privacy, when the UK and USA have just driven a secret truck, right through the middle of it!
Look, we KNOW that you're got a hard-on for slagging off the EU because your country is a has-been and is falling apart visibly day by day, but can you at LEAST read what the fuck you're posting to? Or is your right to plaster your fucking "free speech" all over the internet so mandatory that you can't (and should not) wait until you've informed yourself before you have an opinion and spout it out to the world???
The EU ruling was signed up to allow you to force people keeping data that is personal (under the remit of what counts as such for the Data Protection Act) to be removed. Some retard thought they could make believe this was a "magigal world" where you can tell everyone to delete information that ISN'T private information (per DPA) but the same lawmakers who helped craft it told him "It isn't a magical world.".
Then YOU come along and go all "oh, it wasn't a 'magical world' like they thought, therefore I should be ALLOWED to keep private information because companies want it and they are better than you people!!!".
Google is just an aggregate. Google didn't publish those things. People who find falsehoods published about them should go after the content creator and hosts.
I suspect that in this I will be contrary to most of the /. audience, but I don't believe that there IS an inherent "right to be forgotten".
Not at ALL.
In fact, I'd go so far as to point to the anonymizing of people as one of the more pernicious aspects of modern society (both as subject and as direct-object).
What we do, what we say, and the ripples of these actions are fundamentally WHO WE ARE. For better or worse, they are inescapably tied to us.
As much as we'd like to deny some things, or be allowed to (re)define ourselves, our actions speak more clearly to our essential character and personality than anything we can say, or rationalize, or even remember (since our memories are going to be biased in any case). Everyone makes mistakes, fools try to run from them. The facts of our mistakes are likewise part of us.
The idea that people have a "right" to erase this, to say "I am as I am today, not as I was yesterday" isn't subtle and isn't profound: it's denial.
Oh I think I "get it" - the assertion behind the 'right to be forgotten' is one of anonymity. In an era where the power of the individual seems to have vanished in the face of the might of collective entities like governments and corporations, the perception is that one can dodge aside by being anonymous. That too is silly in an era where passive observation is growing more comprehensive and data retention is nearly eternal.
-Styopa
Just as the concentration of computer processing power cycles between the client and the server (could/network) so to does the length of time that consequences of your actions stay with you.
This is despite most developed countries having a concept along the lines of the UK's "rehabilitation of offenders" - the right to put your wrongs behind you and start again. We have now entered a cycle where that is not possible, because your wrongs are documented forever on the Internet.
And that will continue, until such time as we can travel faster than information.
It is such a huge undertaking to remove anything from the internet that it doesn't make sense to have a right to be forgotten. How can you expect a search engine to filter its results from anything anyone ever hoped to remove from the web while still accurately indexing it? On top of that, even if you managed to get Google, or Bing, or whatever to stop indexing any page with personal information, what keeps them from being remembered? You cannot tell google to search imgur for pictures of cats, or airplanes, or naked girls, but there are other sites that index them. You cannot ask google to find you a free episode of The Sopranos and it won't, but there are other sites that index them; when these are taken down no-one has any difficult finding a replacement. It is simply impossible, technically impossible to be forgotten if there is someone out there that wants to keep the information.
By copyrighting everthing about me, I've solved this problem, because surely they're required to such material on request?
So when they rule that hosting magnet links is the same as hosting the content, we boo and throw tomatoes.
Then they turn around and say that indexing content on other sites is not the same as hosting that content, and... we boo and throw tomatoes.
What's that saying about pots and kettles?
"In the database, part of the database...in the database, part of the database!"
I am John Hurt.
Use Google to find web sites hosting data about you. Contact them to delete it. Now it won't show up in Google or ANY OTHER search engine.
What he wrote that you could not exert the data protection act provision as the search engine level. If you want to be forgotten (as is your right) you have to request removal at the web site level. And then the indexes will forget about you
So : Google search - PASS
Facebook - FAIL
So is a guy who collects child porn off the Internet and redistributes it, and points others to it, but doesn't create any himself. Does that make it ok? Think hard before you answer: society has pretty much already nailed this down. It means the aggregator is not an innocent party.
The specific example cited was that of a guy who long ago was repossessed as a result of defaulting on his mortgage. Given that a public notice will have been issued on this, there is data about him 'in the public domain'. In the old days, when search engines didn't exist, that sort of data would have remained invisible to almost all people. These days it's suddenly become visible because of new technology. The same applies to ancient criminal convictions or other moments of fame generally forgotten. In this context, the debate is far more interesting: is my 15 minutes of fame to be available for the rest of time, or should access to it be limited. If it is as a result of an article in a newspaper, then should the newspaper be required to remove certain articles? Or should the search engines be stoppable? Or should we accept that something new has emerged? The need to forget past mistakes is recognised in the English criminal law by banning the identities of people under 18 from being published if they come before the criminal courts. This is an attempt to allow juvenile offenders to escape a permanent black mark against their name.
Vote them out put the bastards out of business
Jack of all trades,master of none
I think that paragraph D.41 is important to remember:
And footnote 27 about those "exclusion codes" says:
Now I know that almost all Slashdotters already know about this, but if this passes then it means that (in the EU) it is written in law that a search engine spider isn't allowed to use stuff that you kept out with your robots.txt file.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
http://slashdot.org/submission/2752583/do-we-have-the-right-to-be-forgotten
But you have the right to try to be forgotten.
Get inventive.