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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.)
And not everyone agrees on the definition of privacy, what qualifies as "inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant", or what to do with misleading information.
A friend was recently arrested for sexual acts on a child at a daycare. Neither the newspaper nor the police department cared that there were witnesses that say it couldn't have happened. They didn't care that it took years for it to come up from a child who almost certainly was too young to even remember what happened that many years ago. They didn't care that the father had some longstanding beef with the daycare he worked at. Nope, they just wanted to plaster my friend's name and face across the internet and newspapers. The result? Death threats, loss of job, losing his and his parents' savings for bail... yeah, basically turning the life around of one of the (morally) best people I've ever known, without justification and without apology.
I'm not sure this will ever truly have a solution.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
europe is not 'stupid'. its US that are stupid.
they lead us, head and shoulders, in privacy. only a fool would criticize privacy.
the internet does not trump the thousands of years of social morals and standards.
"just because you can, does not mean you SHOULD"
too much info is already there online. I'm all in favor of reeling a lot of it back, when it comes to ruining an innocent person's life. yes, we SHOULD think about mutual respect and not just say 'once its out there, its out there'. that's a cop-out and many people in the world are tired of that childish attitude.
I applaud europe for thinking about how society should work, not just letting the googles of the world dictate the 'new normal' to us.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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
I agree that the US justice system is too quick to arrest and prosecute people, and that many things are wrongly defined as crimes. If you want to fix that, then fix it
Yes, I agree it would be great to "fix it." But even if we stop a significant percentage of bad arrests and prosecutions, police are never going to be 100% sure when they have to arrest someone in a situation where there's a apparently significant safety threat. And prosecutors are never going to be 100% certain they'll get a guilty plea. Even if we don't arrest people for stupid laws, we'll still have errors and abuses of power.
So, even if we do the reform you suggest, we just reduce the frequency of the problem, but still have people whose names and reputations are ruined unnecessarily. You're never going to get a perfect system.
And as long as you have a free press, you'll have sensationalist journalism that's going to unfairly present those who have been arrested or accused. As far as I can tell, we have a few options:
(1) Attempt something like this "right to be forgotten" (which, by the way, I don't really think will work well)
(2) Have secret police and court proceedings (not good for anyone -- will lead to more abuse rather than less)
(3) Severely restrict freedom of the press and publishing information about people arrested or accused (not good for general freedom, also likely to lead to abuse)
(4) Force news media to run equivalent levels of coverage refuting their accusations when charges are dropped or someone is acquitted (never gonna happen, and nobody will pay attention anyway)
(5) Actively begin investigating and prosecuting people who are suspected of discriminating against those who have had a "run in with the law" but were never convicted or charged (again, unlikely to happen)
I'm open to other ideas. These all sound pretty impossible to me, and some sound stupid. But perhaps trying to let someone who was never charged or convicted of a crime to attempt to ensure that news stories about an erroneous arrest aren't the top search engine link is one small concession, and probably the least worrisome as a threat to other freedoms. I don't know.