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Thousands of Europeans Petition For Their 'Right To Be Forgotten'
The EU's new rule (the result of a court case published May 13) requiring that online businesses remove on request information that is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" has struck a chord with more than 12,000 individuals, a number that's rising fast. Other search engines, ISPs, and firms are sure to follow, but the most prominent reaction to the decision thus far, and one that will probably influence all the ones to come, is Google's implementation of an online form that users can submit to request that information related to them be deleted. The Daily Mail reports that the EU ruling "has already been criticised after early indications that around 12 per cent of applications were related to paedophilia. A further 30 per cent concern fraud and 20 per cent were about people's arrests or convictions"; we mentioned earlier this month one pedophile's request for anonymity. As the First Post story linked above puts it, the requirement that sites scrub their data on request puts nternet companies in the position of having to interpret the court’s broad criteria for information meeting the mandate's definition of "forgettable," "as well as developing criteria for distinguishing public figures from private individuals." Do you favor opt-out permissions for reporting facts linked to individuals? What data or opinions about themselves should people not be able to suppress? (Note: Google's form has this disclaimer: "We're working to finalize our implementation of removal requests under European data protection law as soon as possible. In the meantime, please fill out the form below and we will notify you when we start processing your request." That finalization may take some time, since there are 28 data-protection agencies across the EU to harmonize.)
Is privacy requires work.
Who'll be trying to get all links to pages about her removed ASAP.
This is a pity, as it points out in mile high letters to any potential future employer how big a security risk she'll be to their IT systems
(and their public reputation).
The fundamental flaw in all this is that Google is not a big website full of content that they publish. Google indexes content on other websites. If someone wants to use the state to force others not to publish truthful information about them (questionable in itself), then let them go after those doing the publishing. Google is the wrong target.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Every perv and criminal in Europe will get in on this.
This ruling set a very dangerous precedent. Some things must not be forgotten - such as the backgrounds of candidates for public office. While information on a currently public figure wouldn't be able to be suppressed in practice (see: Streisand effect), factual but damaging information could be suppressed prior to that candidate being first elected on a false image. Though primary documents may still exist, the loss of Googleability puts citizen journalists at a strong disadvantage.
I worry about the formation of a civically-damaging memory hole, into which the histories of crooks and liars disappear prior to their ascention to office on a false persona.
seems more applicable to EU MEPs themselves.
Why don't you Europeans kick those morons out?
The UK and most of Europe is unlike the US in that once convicted criminals that have been punished, unless of a particularly serious crime, there are laws protecting their rights to not have that information disclosed, so that they can resume a normal job or whatever in society.
With the US system of throwing more people into prison per capita than pretty much any other country, and also that in the US such things are permanently on your record, it can only make it much harder for ex-cons to ever find work again and resume a lawful life. The system is self-defeating in making it much more likely that ex-cons actually have no option but to turn back to crime to even make a living.
The problem with Google is that they are clearly assuming that US law/mindset should operate worldwide. Google need to get over themselves and make sure their information retention follows the same rehabilitation law that exists already to protect the rights of ex-offenders, for a very good reason.
IMHO we should have the right to control any and all information about us that is stored by corporations. We should also be able to force them to disclose all the info they do store about us. In fact the whole question of who owns that information should be determined. I beleive if the information is about you, then you should own it and so have full control of it.
The problem with this "right", is that another way of stating it is "the right to reach into every computer in the planet and delete anything about you".
Not only is that right a violation of other people's property rights, it's pragmatically impossible to actually implement.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
i just do not get this.
as someone who battles on a daily basis with the sins of my past ( nowadays even women i try to date run criminal background checks ), i don't see how this effort is going to really help anyone.the way they think it is.
there are all sorts of FREE sites that dish the public information that these people are trying to block Google from aggregating, and the moment these privacy invaders realize Google no longer is a valid source for getting the info their paranoia craves, they will find another site that does.
you are living under a proverbial pre-interwebz rock if you think this Google opt-out form is going to prevent the people are are interesting in screening and snooping from learning things from your background like felony convictions and such.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
What is with this obsession for using pedophiles to justify the erosion of rights and privacy? No, don't answer that, it was a rhetorical question.
Pedophiles are no worse than rapists, murderers and other criminals that cause physical harm to others. In fact I would rate them as a lower threat than murderers. How come we consider pedophiles so reprehensible that we go out of our way to ruin their lives forever yet we don't think twice about doing the same for a murderers or serially violent criminals? Should I have the right to know if my neighbor was in jail for killing someone? Shouldn't I be aware that someone in my neighborhood was jailed for beating a man to within an inch of his life? They don't respect life any more than a pedophile.
And the most idiotic aspect of registering sex offenders is we just lump everyone together. Sex offences can be everything from getting caught pissing on the bushes (your willy is hanging out), mooning someone (yes it is indecent exposure), a 16 y/o having consensual sex with an 18 y/o (statutory rape), right up to full blown violent 1978 "I spit on your grave" rape. So registry maps are full of useless noise.
Lets take it a step further and also make public a list of people who have: been arrested for drug possession, burglary, prostitution, and assault. This way we can all live in fear of our neighbors. Sounds great right?
I realize the EU is probably different than the US but every time this crap rolls around idiots start yammering about pedophiles and children.
the remembered have no control over the rememberers remembering.
lose != loose
...and not the website hosting the information?
I heard a supporter of this law on a radio report saying he'd be surprised if Google got more than "a few hundred" requests. Complete lack of logic on this one.
Cool story bro, almost interesting.
I don't understand this. I mean, Google doesn't actually forget anything. They just accept to stop displaying some search results.
I repeat: Google doesn't actually forget anything.
They are not complying with the law.
Trials will ensue!
"The right to be forgotten" requires a great imposition on others. If I observed you in a cafe, what would it take for you to assert your right to be forgotten? Why is it any different in the case of a group of individuals or a corporation?
My memory of you is part of my identity, something you have no right to.
The pedo's problem is easy. He has no right to be forgotten. When you commit a crime and are properly convicted, you give up some rights. At least that's how it is in the US. If you're a felon you lose the right to vote, bear arms, etc. even after you're out of prison. You might be able to get them back, but they're no longer rights. You have to work to get them back.
So. If Europe has any laws about sex offender notification they should trump the right to be forgotten. If they don't have such laws, they should fix their (legal) code fast.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In general I disagree with the idea of a "right to be forgotten". Rather than trying to "forget" the past pretend that all that embarrassing and/or illegal stuff never happened, how about if we all grow up and, as a society recognize that people do dumb shit and can actually change over time. You shouldn't have the "right" to track down and burn all the copies of photos of you smoking weed that you happily plastered all over your Facebook page when you were in college. It happened, and if someone still has evidence you can't compel them to hide or destroy it simply because it's embarrassing now. It would be so much better for all of us to realize that opinions, attitudes, and behaviors change over time; we learn from mistakes, and hopefully don't commit them again. Own up to it, and cut others some slack if they did dumb stuff of their own a decade ago.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
On the other hand, DuckDuckGo, appears to be a US only operation. Because of the SPEECH Act, DuckDuckGo could probably ignore European demands. A judgement against DuckDuckGo would be difficult to enforce. (I am not a lawyer, get your own. This is political, social analysis, not legal advise.)
Who knows what DuckDuckGo will decide? But if DuckDuckGo does not some other US search engine will. European advertisers would have to pay in advance.
The end result could be some a migration away from google's search engine.
What a setback to stone-age ethics.
What happened to "having paid your debt to society" ? Stop listening to the prison industry.
Also, "30% were about pedophiles" doesn't tell you anything. Quite a few accusations into that direction are false, sometimes mislead and sometimes intentionally fraudulent, because there's no easier way to ruin a man's life than having his face in the papers with the word "pedophile" next to it. And more often than not, when the court case reveals that everything was made up and doesn't have one leg to stand on, the papers won't report that on the front page. And if someone googles for it, they are much more likely to find something saying you are a pedophile than the tiny page-20 posting that said actually no, you aren't.
If you're wrongly accused of a crime, you absolutely have every right to have that forgotten. In fact, this is probably the prime example as to why we need such a right.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The internet forgets nothing.
I think that we should first start observing the "right to be forgotten" by forgetting about anything these petitioners say.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
is the bast that you can come up with, then you should probably remain quiet and think hard about things.
What is this intended for?
So, let's assume your submit the form to google and you are successfully removed, what does happen??
You are a EU citizen, and anybody using any Europe located IP, will not see the info you wanted to be removed in a search they do. Cool, so you won't see yourself appearing on the pages you search for...
Except that...
People outside Europe will still see relevant results without any problem. The info is not removed or blacklisted in google, it just doesn't appear into european search results. Use a proxy anywhere else, and you will see the results you wanted to be removed.
This is at best 100% useless, as it's trivially bypassed....
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
Will Google forget european results for US customers as well? If I use Tor from EU with exit node in US, and do a Google.com search, will they censor the results?
Because the effect of all those requests will be costs, and those costs will in turn require action on the providers to police themselves and the content. Fear of suits and massive fines will mean more filters, more takedowns and less web. The Internet, born in the USA 1969, killed in Europe 2014. R.I.P. and Sieg Heil das Euro-Macht!
Are you for real? I have to make judgements about people all of the time, pretty much everyone not living as a hermit does. I don't have the luxury of dragging them to a courthouse and putting them in front of a jury when I need to make those judgements. If we can't base those judgements by what kind of a person have they been, what do you suggest? Perhaps some of the old fallbacks, like the color of their skin or how much they profess to love god?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They will post about their daily lives on facebook and twitter, which will just bring back everything about them on Google... GJ.
70 years ago it was "Never Forget". Now it's "Never Remember". Make up your mind, Europe! ;)
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Who decides what is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant"?
The Court points out that the data subject may address such a request directly to the operator of the search engine (the controller) which must then duly examine its merits. Where the controller does not grant the request, the data subject may bring the matter before the supervisory authority or the judicial authority so that it carries out the necessary checks and orders the controller to take specific measures accordingly.
Google would be required to rule on the voracity of the request or defend themselves in court. Do you really think that is Google's job?
The main stupidity of this ruling is that it says that posting the information is OK.
The AEPD rejected the complaint against La Vanguardia, taking the view that the information in question had been lawfully published by it.
but Google has to remove references to it.
On the other hand, the complaint was upheld as regards Google Spain and Google Inc
So it is OK to post the information but not OK to facilitate the information being found. I find those positions in opposition.
And I'll tell you the root causes of this "right" are a bunch of politicians et al. that want to be able to delete facts about themselves that would otherwise make them look bad. The ex-FIA president comes to mind with his photos at a sex party.But I can think of plenty politicians and friends that would like to hide a couple of run ins with justice, and a couple of photos with prostitutes of questionable age.
That's exactly what could happen to Google Search as well. The amount of people wanting to be erased from the index will grow exponentially, and that index will be mutilated beyond recognition up to a point where it won't be useful anymore. In the long run, I see Google dropping Europe as an interesting area altogether.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
"Right to be forgotten" REALLY means "Right to suppress other people's free speech, when they are talking about you"
For example; if you were a fraudster or a criminal.... this implies you can now remove search results to hide this information, in order to be able to exploit more people and commit more crimes.
The links are not actually deleted from Google, but only filtered for searches done from the EU.
So searches done from outside the EU can still see these links.
So this is actually worse than what we had before. Now Google is filtering ... uh ... censoring search results for some countries.
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt...
From the internet this content but do not disappear with it. Also just Google users should get displayed the filtered results in the European Union. Users outside the Member States, ie approximately in the United States should continue to get displayed the complete hit list. In this case, Google will note the language setting of the user.
Google Translate is bad, but you get the gist.
I'd like this quote to be removed from its association to me.
"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it"
I didn't quite say it that way and it seems irrelevant now.
-- George Santayana
If you believe that then presumably you also believe the analoguous situation with respect to murder:
It's a stupid interpretation because it misses the point that civilized countries try to protect their residents from harm, and the alleged "right to harm others" does not exist except in the heads of the mentally disturbed and completely delusional.
... at war with Estasia.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I feel I must be missing something because, wouldn't be better to petition the site actually hosting the content you object to, rather than the search engine that found it? I mean, wouldn't you next have to go to DuckDuckGo, and then to all the other search engines, and search engines of the future, to get them to remove the same results? Surely I'm not understanding this ruling? Maybe it's cached results of content, long gone, that they want removed? That's gotta be it. Right?
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Besides, this makes it easier for me to find the actual data about me that I might want to take action on. Sorta like the business directory portion of the phone book (A.K.A., the "Yellow Pages"). Let me guess - names like "AAA" and "ZZZZYZYZ" should be illegal because they produce an artificially ranked listing there, right?. And listing all auto mechanics in a section of that phone book called "Automotive Repair" - well, that's wrong too, eh?