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Google Starts Removing Search Results After EU Ruling

Posted by samzenpus on from the forget-me dept.

An anonymous reader writes Google has begun removing some search results to comply with a European Union ruling upholding citizens' right to have objectionable personal information about them hidden in search engines. "Google engineers overnight updated the company's technical infrastructure to begin implementing the removals, and Thursday began sending the first emails to individuals informing them that links they had requested were being taken down. The company has hired a dedicated 'removals team' to evaluate each request, though only a small number of the initial wave of takedown requests has so far been processed."

15 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Data protection in the private sphere is one of the few areas where the EU has its shit together.

    It is easy for any determined person to use the Internet to destroy the average person's reputation - the only anecdotes are a lot of money or to hide yourself completely from the world so nobody's judgment is relevant.

    1. Re:Good. by Chrisq · · Score: 3, Insightful

      True, but a lot of the requests come from politicians with dodgy pasts and paedophiles. I expect Muslims to get in on the act soon as well (I'm sure they'll say "it's not relevant that I called for the subjugation of non-muslims and women now I'm running for Bradford council"!).

    2. Re:Good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The requests from nasty people will be publicised because that is the most effective way to give the appearance that these laws are harmful, even though the majority of people have a legitimate, reasonable right to have their private lives kept private.

      As for politicians (including Muslims in public office, of course), they are in the public sphere and ought to be excepted in legislation. People convicted of sex abuses are harder to treat:
      1) there is a whole range of convictions from baby-fucking to taking the wrong photo of your 17 year old partner, all of which tend to get you on the same register;
      2) the public justice system should be effectively dealing with offenders - if they're a danger, they shouldn't be in the wilderness or unsupervised anyway;
      3) most "PAEDOS HIDING EVERYWHERE" is pussified scare-mongering. If you're going to be sexually abused, it's almost certainly by someone you know well.

    3. Re:Good. by DarkTempes · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree that people have a legitimate, reasonable right to have their private lives kept private.
      I don't agree that public information on the internet that is indexed by Google constitutes private information.

      I can see a situation where someone illegally put your private information on the internet and you send a C&D and then get a court to order that website to remove that information and they comply and THEN you ask Google to remove it from search results (assuming it doesn't automatically get removed the next time the index is updated.)
      Maybe the website is in a different country and doesn't comply and you want Google to take it down.
      Then maybe I could understand an argument for a process to remove private information from Google.

      But if you post naked pictures of yourself on a forum or advocate cannibalism on twitter then tough luck. That's no longer private information as you just published it to the world.
      It's not like removing the information from their index without removing it from an actual website is going to make the information 'private' again.

    4. Re:Good. by Poeli · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's not like removing the information from their index without removing it from an actual website is going to make the information 'private' again.

      Nope, because google does not have to remove it from their index. All they have to remove is the link between a search term and a search result. The result can still show up if you use a different search term.

    5. Re:Good. by jareth-0205 · · Score: 2

      So the extreme wings of Christianity has groups like the KKK, and you very much should fear them if you're Jewish. By your logic any Christian should be also feared.

      Do you think the streets of France are awash with Muslim-on-Christian violence?

    6. Re:Good. by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      True, but a lot of the requests come from politicians with dodgy pasts and paedophiles. I expect Muslims to get in on the act soon as well (I'm sure they'll say "it's not relevant that I called for the subjugation of non-muslims and women now I'm running for Bradford council"!).

      While I agree with your conclusion (That these take downs are bad) I dislike your argumentum ad metum reasoning.

      By your reasoning it would "ok" if 'the innocent' had the ability to remove information about themselves from the Internet. Then you go on to describe groups of people you dislike that should not be allowed to remove information from the Internet, almost as punishment. The goals of the petitioners are irrelevant. We are all equal, weather you feel we're good or bad shouldn't affect your argument.

      A better argument would be "To shed light on the unsavory, we should retain the Internet as a whole. If we allow the innocent to remove information about themselves, we also will have to allow the guilty."

      Now there is no reason to disparage large groups of people.

    7. Re:Good. by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The requests from nasty people will be publicised because that is the most effective way to give the appearance that these laws are harmful, even though the majority of people have a legitimate, reasonable right to have their private lives kept private.

      I'm curious whether Google is planning on posting a summary of this to Chilling Effects, just like they do for other takedown requests - something that I expect they will do at some point. No need to violate individual privacy requests, but a simple breakdown of what kind of information is being removed, in what kind of quantities and for what kind of reason/excuse should be sufficient to let people see whether or not this is being abused in any way. And for certain elements of the media to express their outrage over it, of course.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    8. Re:Good. by Viol8 · · Score: 2

      Wow, lots of capital letters. That really adds weight to your riposte.

    9. Re:Good. by dave420 · · Score: 2

      Your fear isn't valid, though. That's the thing. You think that's the case, and are willing to label millions of people in the process, simply because you're intellectually lazy. Tell us again why anyone should listen to you?

    10. Re:Good. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Informative

      If by 'valid fear' you mean 'prejudice-inspired paranoia', then your statement may be true.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    11. Re:Good. by Wootery · · Score: 2

      On the otherhand, I do have a valid fear of that from muslims.

      Err, in which country, pray?

      Here in England I'm pretty sure I'm more likely to be harmed by a Christian or atheist than by a Muslim, just by virtue of the fact that there are more Christians and atheists than Muslims. My 'valid fear' doesn't really run across religious lines.

    12. Re:Good. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's not what the right to be forgotten is about. It's about maintaining the way information naturally used to fall from the public conciousness, and enforcing existing laws on the use of certain data.

      For example, someone who committed a crime a long time ago which is now considered spent by the state doesn't have to tell anyone about it. In the past the only records were in old newspapers and police archives, inaccessible to most people unless they were willing to invest significant time and money. Now those archived newspaper stories are preserved on the internet forever and only a Google search away.

      In the case that started all this a man had been bankrupt. That's a fact, but one which credit rating agencies are not allowed to report after a certain period of time has passed. If any bank could see the newspaper reports about the bankruptcy simply by searching Google that would have been undermined - society decided that after time bankruptcy would be "forgotten" so people could move on with their lives.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Yes I saw that with "Erich Spangenberg" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's interesting: I was goggling for "Erich Spangenberg" who is what is known to us technical people as a patent troll and at the bottom of page 1 of the google links I see,

    "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe. Learn more"

    That's the first time I've seen that message. Sounds like someone is doing reputation management.

  3. Bad by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is like locking the door after the cow has bolted the barn. If there's something nasty about you that got out into the internets, the better solution would be to have Google downgrade the search results. Or maybe just mark it the way Google flags malware or hide it behind some sort of "Safe Search"-like filter.

    The way I see it, Google's compliance gives it less of a right to object to a government, such as China, pushing for Google to censor its results in the name of something supposedly more important, social stability because those nasty dissidents are harming the reputation of the Party bosses, who we all know are models of virtue until purged and officially denounced.