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'Hidden From Google' Remembers the Sites Google Is Forced To Forget

Posted by Unknown on from the freedom-eagle dept.

Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "Hidden From Google, the brainchild of a web programmer in New Jersey, archives each website that Google is required to take down from European Union search listings thanks to the recent court decision that allows people to request that certain pages be scrubbed from Google's search results if they're outdated or irrelevant. That decision has resulted in takedown requests from convicted sex offenders and huge banking companies, among thousands of others."

31 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Now we just need a browser plugin... by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... that takes the info from Hidden From Google and reinserts it back into your searches ;)

    --
    Fox: "I think we should call it... your grave!" Cast: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
    1. Re:Now we just need a browser plugin... by TapeCutter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "...reinserts it back into your searches"...at the top of the page.

      Sorry but you have to be pedantic when gathering requirements.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  2. Awesome! by dskoll · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I hope this makes people think twice before filing a forget-me request. It ensures they'll be remembered.

    1. Re:Awesome! by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I hope this makes people think twice before filing a forget-me request. It ensures they'll be remembered.

      Perhaps you'll be the victim of slander and lose your career over a lie that is interesting enough to go viral where your vindication isn't and doesn't.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    2. Re:Awesome! by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I hope this makes people think twice before filing a forget-me request. It ensures they'll be remembered.

      Perhaps you'll be the victim of slander and lose your career over a lie that is interesting enough to go viral where your vindication isn't and doesn't.

      THIS. All of the stories on this decision seem to be focusing on people who are clearly bad or did terrible things in the past.

      But our modern news and social media society on the internet archives all sorts of crap that isn't actually true, and never was true. But the salacious headline will always draw attention; the minor blurb on the back page will never be remembered when the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted or everyone just admits that it was a mistake.

      (Just to be clear: I don't think the EU decision will actually work, and TFA is proof of it. But we do have a real problem -- even if 95% of the claims made so far have been by people who committed horrible bad past acts, the real injustice is to the 5% who just got caught up in media attention for something that turned out not to be true, or even nowhere near as horrible as people claimed.)

    3. Re:Awesome! by asmkm22 · · Score: 2

      And by all means, create a law to deal with that specifically. Just don't create a law that does that, AND is open for abuse by people simply looking bury their mistakes like they never happened.

    4. Re:Awesome! by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Lets not forget that you don't even need charges.

      http://www.cnet.com/news/pirac...

      Something like that could seriously place job promotions or prospects in jeopardy. If could ruin a legitimate business just with the controversy hanging out there associated with the name even though he was vindicated in the end.

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

      > I don't think the EU decision will actually work, and TFA is proof of it.

      The goal of the EU ruling is not to erase the stories from the net. It is simply to make it harder to find, If the goal were to erase, they would require the site actually hosting the story to take it down, not just remove the entry in google's database.

      It used to be that we had a form of privacy due to our data being hard to find. Property ownership records in a cabinet at the local tax assessor's office, arrest records at the country jail, birth, death, marriage records at the town, etc. The information was still public but the effort required to access it was a significant barrier to abuse. It was a good trade-off between making the information public and protecting privacy.

      The EU is trying to approximate that balance. All the people who complain that it won't "work" are defining the problem wrong. It isn't a situation where black or white will work, but grey might.

    6. Re:Awesome! by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      > I don't think the EU decision will actually work, and TFA is proof of it.

      The goal of the EU ruling is not to erase the stories from the net. It is simply to make it harder to find

      Were you responding to me? If so, note I never claimed the goal was to "erase stories from the net." I simply said that it "won't work," and by that I mean it won't do very well at achieving its goal, which -- as you correctly note -- is to make stuff harder to locate.

      The EU is trying to approximate that balance. All the people who complain that it won't "work" are defining the problem wrong. It isn't a situation where black or white will work, but grey might.

      See, here's the problem. If TFA works, we basically have a database to find everything people have registered to be "forgotten." As I said, if this site continues to exist, then the EU ruling is ineffective: it only managed to get rid of some search engine links, while also facilitating a system where people who want to do even casual actual background checks know the second place to go. In effect, it makes it easier to find, if someone puts forth just a step beyond the minimal effort.

      For people who actually care about finding the details of someone's reputation, the ruling may thus make it easier to find information someone really wants hidden... which seems to be the opposite of the EU goal.

    7. Re:Awesome! by fustakrakich · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps you'll be the victim of slander...

      The words are nothing. You would be a victim of those who believed them. Everybody wags the dog in this argument.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    8. Re:Awesome! by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You mean other than the fact they're a complete joke?

      Even if you believe that the be the case, how does another complete joke of a law fix anything?

      --

      How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
    9. Re:Awesome! by Rich0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Agree, but fixing the root cause of this is MUCH harder than removing some search results.

      Heck, getting gay marriage legalized is probably an easier cultural change than getting people to treat information they hear with appropriate skepticism and giving people a chance. Actually, if we could fix that then getting gay marriage legalized would be a simple follow-on...

    10. Re:Awesome! by kwbauer · · Score: 2

      Yeah, because it sucks when people base their impression of you based on things you actually did.

    11. Re:Awesome! by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      I hope this makes people think twice before filing a forget-me request. It ensures they'll be remembered.

      Perhaps you'll be the victim of slander and lose your career over a lie that is interesting enough to go viral where your vindication isn't and doesn't.

      In other news, life sucks for the rest of us to.
      Can we make it illegal for ice cream to make me fat while we're at it?

    12. Re:Awesome! by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the key is that we need to find a balance between the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten.

      Ludicrous story in the paper only designed to make headlines by slandering you? Sure, let's forget about
      You were charged with a crime but did your time and are back in society? Sure, let's forget about it and let you get back to being a member of society. (Otherwise we might as well just brand criminals on the forehead)
      You're a big company that had an oil spill but want to rewrite history? Let's not forget

    13. Re:Awesome! by Xest · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "THIS. All of the stories on this decision seem to be focusing on people who are clearly bad or did terrible things in the past."

      Exactly.

      People on Slashdot are quick to slap down politicians who use the "think of the children!" argument and cry "paedophile!" when they want justification for their bullshit, yet it seems to go completely undetected when Slashdot does the exact same thing:

      "That decision has resulted in takedown requests from convicted sex offenders and huge banking companies, among thousands of others.""

      So it's okay to cry sex offender and so forth when it suits or what? There is absolutely zero balance in this wording, it's about as loaded a statement as you can get. Not only does it use shock terms like "sex offender" it also simply says it has resulted in take down notices. This doesn't mean that any of them were actually adhered to, if Google is adhering to take down notices from huge banking companies then it's doing it wrong because companies aren't protected by the European Data Protection Directive which is what this law is about. Only private individuals are, and even then not if there is a clear public interest in keeping the data up (i.e. a corrupt politician).

      So, dear Slashdot, please don't resort to the same type of shit I'd expect from a corrupt or ignorant politician and Fox News, it's not helpful. I guess it may not completely be Slashdot's fault beyond their usual failure to edit. I guess it could be that the submitter is just a complete idiot, but all the same, not here please, if I wanted biased idiocy I'd go straight to Fox, The Daily Mail or The Register or something equally full of mindless incorrect dross.

      Like most stories, there are two sides to this one.

    14. Re:Awesome! by Megol · · Score: 2

      You know that covers near 100% of all people? Yes including you!

    15. Re:Awesome! by Sockatume · · Score: 2

      ...which would be moot were it not for the Google-as-address-bar phenomenon where casual users treat Google like it's the whole internet. Google made this mess for themselves when they became the defacto way of finding things online; they're the internet's index, and editorial decisions they make - even algorithmically - are now part of the infrastructure.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    16. Re:Awesome! by dskoll · · Score: 2

      If I'm a victim of slander, I'll go after the slanderer and the site publishing the slander, not Google for indexing it. Existing laws are quite sufficient to handle this case.

    17. Re:Awesome! by TangoMargarine · · Score: 2

      The answer is obviously to delist the "removed from Google" page from Google.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    18. Re: Awesome! by TangoMargarine · · Score: 3, Funny

      "I hate this guy and you should too! Because s/he's a..."

      [ ] Libtard
      [ ] Republicunt
      [ ] Terrorist
      [X] Pedophile
      [ ] Muslim
      [ ] Creationist
      [ ] Fox News watcher
      [ ] Virgin

      Thanks so much for your input.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
  3. This guy is going to be so rich by BigSlowTarget · · Score: 3

    He will do great - right up until he is sued into oblivion.

  4. The Streisand Effect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

  5. Let me guess: by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    StreisandEffect.com ?

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Let me guess: by gargleblast · · Score: 5, Funny

      I can see the headlines now: Barbara Streisand sues for trademark dilution.

  6. WayBackMachine.org by MindPrison · · Score: 2

    Has it all anyway.

    --
    What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
    1. Re:WayBackMachine.org by skovnymfe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No they don't. They remove plenty of sites from their archive. It even makes /. headlines occasionally.

  7. Will Google visit his site? by tomhath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What happens when Google visits his site? Is that another take down request? I see the possibility of infinite recursion here.

  8. Re:When is it appropriate to forget a conviction? by Xest · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You shouldn't assume that because Google has removed a record that someone has a legal right to be forgotten.

    Google is intentionally fucking around with removals because it's pissed off at the court ruling, so it's trying to make as much of a mockery as it can without falling foul of the law.

    That means it's removing cases where there is clear public interest defence, because it wants to make a point.

    Which is one of the reasons having market monopolies is bad. Because Google has a search engine monopoly it can fuck around with results to suit it's political agenda. In a truly competitive market this would hurt it because other engines would keep the public interest stuff and only remove the legit stuff.

    Given this, I would suggest that rather than going to .com instead of .co.uk you just go to a different search engine altogether - one that doesn't manipulate results to suit it's political agenda which is exactly what Google is doing here.

    There is absolutely no reason someone convicted of a serious crime 5 years ago would have their conviction considered spent. Even public bankruptcy records can be used by credit rating agencies up to 7 years after the event.

    Only minor crimes have shorter periods, such as speeding which I believe is about 3 years normally.

    This is Google playing politics, and not a problem with European law stating that people still serving sentences can have their crimes forgotten or anything stupid like that.

  9. Re:It was bound to happen by Xest · · Score: 2

    The site owner is responsible, but some sites have exemptions for processing data - i.e. we don't want newspapers scrubbed clean to change history. In this case newspapers have defence as being guardians of public record. Google does not have that exemption.

    Should it have that exemption? Maybe. Maybe that'll come about in the 2012 European Data Protection Directive refresh that is still being worked on, but Google needs to argue it's case there, not just flout the law as it stands.

    Fundamentally the problem is that data protection applies to all organisation with only a handful of exemptions (law enforcement, public record) and currently Google does not fall under one of those exemptions. You can go after the source in Europe if it doesn't fall under some exemption, but if it does all you can do is go after those that don't have an exemption, and Google is one of those that don't because search isn't a protected business activity right now.

  10. Mod parent up by amaurea · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Indeed. WayBackMachine respects robots.txt retroactively, which is insane in my opinion, because it means what WayBackMachine says the web looked like in, say 1999, can change at any moment. For example, if WayBackMachine has 10 years of archived data for a site which then comes under new management that decides it wants to erase that history, they can just put up a robots.txt on the current site, and WayBackMachine will not only stop serving the current version of the site, it will also stop serving all the previous ten years of data. This happened to the original jumptheshark.com, for example.