Google Rejects 58% of "Right To Be Forgotten" Requests

gurps_npc writes CNN Money has a short, interesting piece on the results of Google implementing Europe's "Right to be Forgotten." They are denying most requests, particularly those made by convicted criminals, but are honoring the requests to remove salacious information — such as when a rape victim requested the article mentioning her by name be removed from searches for her name. "In evaluating a request, we will look at whether the results include outdated or inaccurate information about the person," Google said. "We'll also weigh whether or not there's a public interest in the information remaining in our search results -- for example, if it relates to financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions or your public conduct as a government official."

Comments

Creating the "Anti-Search" and Other Dark Matters

[Anonymous Coward]

I's the Google performing the role of particle Accelerator here?

I mean instead of Matters they are creating "Anti-Matters".. in the annhilation wil leave vast Voids like those between Galaxies.. and in their abscence we will form conjectures about what should be or used to be there.. Dark Matters...

I would think people would rather leave well enough alone than feed peoples imaginations... because they can be very dark indeed

What makes them the judge of these matters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is god.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[BitterOak]

It's their search engine. Start your own search engine and you will get to decide what's in it.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[Anonymous Coward]

So might is right, then.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes them the judge of these matters?

The law, which was specifically written that way, and was one of the things they very strenuously argued against when the law was being discussed. But don't let facts get in the way of your Google bashing.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[gmhowell]

It's their search engine. Start your own search engine and you will get to decide what's in it.

Blackjack and hookers, duh.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Might is always right. In this case it works differently though. European states have might based on violence, so they get to make the laws on areas where they can use said might. One of these rules outline ownership rights, for services such as search engines. Because of this rule Google can decide a lot that happens when you enter their website. Not everything, because european nations have decided on some points that must happen, an some that can't happen(libel, hatespeech, childporn, warez, etc.). One of these rules is the "right to be forgotten" rule. Which, in my opinion, if applied right, would be a damn nice rule (although I don't think it CAN be applied right in the long run, so I actually oppose it, as little as that matters) It looks like google is actually currently doing a damn good job following the rules. And not failind bad by just granting every request.

Also, I don't think the requests should be granted of denied by google, but some court. And they should have a filing fee to keep the most stupid requests out. The fee could be some nice amount, say 20000 euros (or even better; 10% of your yearly income plus 5% of your networth, to keep rich criminals from spamming), which you would get back if the request is granted. Just make the rules clear so there won't be "i hope this passes" requests.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[bickerdyke]

It's not even a law. It's a court ruling.

a law would at least give some legal foundation. Another court may decide in a few months that some other name should habe not e taken down.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, Google operates on the country's territory so they can also decide to nationalize everything Google owns there. More realistically would be the fines they'd have to pay, which I suspect Google would love to avoid.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[Raumkraut]

The data protection laws say, in summary, that companies who process peoples' personal information are responsible for keeping that information accurate and up-to-date, and to discard that information when it is no longer relevant.

The court ruling decided that search results on a person's name constituted personal information about that person. Hence search engine indexes are subject to the fore-mentioned laws.

Re:What makes them the judge of these matters?

[Xest]

What? Google didn't even exist when the 1995 European Data Protection Directive was being discussed. This is the law which the courts deemed Google to have breached.

The 2012 refresh is STILL being discussed.

Google is not the final judge in the matter, the courts would be if someone feels Google has not made the correct decision, but as the data controller and data processor Google has a legal obligation to ensure that all personal data which it holds is accurate, uptodate, relevant, and obtained with permission.

These are the criteria Google must use when determining whether it should continue to hold such data. Thus, for example, claims (with proof) of data inaccuracy or outdatedness, claims against data which is not relevant to Google's task as a public search engine (i.e. personal medical history), and claims of data being obtained without permission (personal nude photos) would all pass the test for Google to remove them from search results.

Personally I thought Google was being quite difficult in that it was intentionally pretending it was hard done by by removing legitimate public interest news articles and so forth, but after the European Commission slapped it on the wrist and after it's competitors started following the law without trying to play politics Google fell into line and started fulfilling it's legal obligations without engaging in censorship for the sake of political point scoring. As such, and given the 58% rejection rate it would seem that Google is now doing what it's supposed to and hence doing a decent job of adhering to the law at last.

It still has the opportunity to get the law changed in it's favour through lobbying and negotiations over the 2012 Data Protection Directive update which is the correct avenue to pursue any issues it takes with the law.

What right do they have anyway?

[kheldan]

These are not court records or other official records, they're results in a goddamned search engine. How is it that Google thinks they have the right to decide who is and is not removed from their results? They should either honor all requests or no requests, not 'play god' like this.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because as you said... it is their goddamned search engine. They can do whatever they want with it.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are Google's results, they can do whatever the hell they want with them. Don't like it? Use a different search engine.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's their search engine.. they can, and will, do whatever they want with it.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[sexconker]

This. If they're bound by law to remove results upon request, then they should remove them (assuming the request itself is valid).
They shouldn't be deciding which requests to approve or not beyond a technical / common sense capacity. John Doe obviously couldn't request all results for the generic use of his name to be removed, nor could he request that a specific page for someone else's name be removed.
Anything else should be honored, in accordance with the law.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[tiberus]

On one side you have Google as it was, everything it finds, indexed categorized and available to be found. The other end of the spectrum would be a world without search engines. A vast array of options exist between those two points. Yes, Google is judge, jury and executioner for now as it is their %$%$ search engine and they haven't been forced to do otherwise. Who would you have sit in judgement instead? Who should bear the cost? Honoring no requests is not an available option for Google any longer, it has been decided for them this can not be the case. In regard to honoring all requests, that's not a workable solution either. Would have have it so that I could request that all positive information about you be removed from search results? No, then someone has to arbitrate. Why foist rules upon a new system in the midst of its infancy? If you don't like the results of your request, you can appeal or avail yourself of the courts.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[i kan reed]

"The law" tends to have attributes about what is valid that require some subjective assessment. Nominally these are ironed out through extremely legalistic language, and court precedents. In practice, it frequently includes those the law applies to making judgements.

Theft laws, for example, don't preclude my occasional unsolicited handling of your property within the bounds of common sense, like, say, me bringing you your umbrella you left behind by accident.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[sahuxley]

It's their servers and their search algorithm. They have the right to do whatever they want with it. Any information they display on their web page is protected by the first amendment. Of course, exceptions are in place for any speech, including libel or copyrights. Now, whether that's best for all involved is another question.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Br00se]

The point is to determine if each request is covered by the law. The problem is that the requests they get are not individually approved by a court, that would make it too easy. Instead, they HAVE to be the judge of which requests are covered by the law.

Personally, I think this is a BS law. If something is legally present on web, ie. a ten year old news story, then it should be index-able. However, if there a a factual problem, or contains private information, then the site owners should be required to correct it or take it down. The idea of going after the index is ridiculous, not effective and lazy.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Opportunist]

Maybe you'd like to reevaluate that opinion if someone is out there on a slandering campaign against you and you try desperately to get those photoshopped pics of you out of the system...

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you think the should have honored Rick Santorum's request to remove the search results that made his last name into a crude gay joke?

Or do they only need to remove stuff that is true?

Re: What right do they have anyway?

[babyrat]

This story is about Google operating in Europe. They have their own laws there.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it that Google thinks they have the right to decide who is and is not removed from their results? They should either honor all requests or no requests, not 'play god' like this.

Dear Google,

Attached is a request to remove all results for the 4 billion named individuals hereby requesting the right to be forgotten. I look forward to your expedient honoring of the request.

Sincerely,
Marissa.Mayer@yahoo.com

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is slippery slope because of "Absolute power corrupts Absolutely" which could lead to "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." which is very fallacious...

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you would believe that theft shouldn't result in legal repercussions if you were caught stealing. Therefore, thieves shouldn't be punished.

"If you were in situation X, you might believe differently!" has never been a logical counterargument.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Jason Levine]

"assuming the request itself is valid"

This is the sticking point. For example, my name is pretty common. Suppose there was a news story about a Jason Levine who did something bad and searches on my name were showing this news item. Could I petition Google to "forget" my name? (We'll ignore, for the moment, that I don't live in Europe.) Could the criminal with the same name as me do the same? Could I petition Google to "forget" a hypothetical video of me walking into a light-pole while texting? Can a company request that all mentions of a product be removed if said product was a flop?

The courts, thankfully, didn't tell Google that they had to honor all removal requests. Had they done so, Google might have just saved everyone time and simply shut down their search engine as they would be forced to remove valid search results for inappropriate reasons. The removal requirements the courts gave were somewhat vague so Google is forced to use their corporate judgement as to what constitutes a valid "forget me" request and what is an attempted abuse of the system (and should be denied). If anything, I'm surprised that the rejection rate isn't higher than 58%. The ability to have "the Internet forget" the bad things you did would be very tempting for companies and criminals alike.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[king neckbeard]

If that were the case, I think everyone here would prefer to actually have that taken care of at the source, not through filtering Google..

Re: What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rich European socialist aristocrats don't want people finding dirt on them, simple as that...I applaud their efforts...this is Allah's work!

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Immerman]

>I'm surprised that the rejection rate isn't higher than 58%

As am I. I suspect "whether the requestor can make our lives difficult" is a significant consideration. Or contrariwise "whether a generous donation to the corporate lounge room fund was included". At the extreme end I doubt any request from Google executives would be rejected, regardless of how invalid it may be. Of course having the courts make the call isn't necessarily a guarantee against such abuses, but if we're asking someone to make judgement calls on socially relevant secrecy requests it seems like it would make sense to have it done by somebody at least titularly hired becasue of their ability to Judge potentially complicated questions of social justice.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's what they are doing. Deciding which requests are valid.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, if there a a factual problem [...] then the site owners should be required to correct it or take it down.

I will disagree with that. If a site merely desires to distribute information which is incorrect to some degree (barring outright libel) then they should be allowed to. Fox News has the legal right to lie to the public remember.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Barny]

But with great power comes great responsibility, aren't they standing up and taking that responsibility now?

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[swillden]

This. If they're bound by law to remove results upon request, then they should remove them (assuming the request itself is valid). They shouldn't be deciding which requests to approve or not beyond a technical / common sense capacity.

Umm, the court ordered them to decide which requests to remove, based on the vague criteria mentioned in the summary. And they're legally obligated to get it right, too.

Did you miss the big hullabaloo shortly after this went into effect, when Google was accused of removing stuff that didn't meet the criteria defined by the court? The allegation was that Google was intentionally doing exactly what you said they should -- in violation of the order -- and removing everything requested, in an attempt to show how ludicrous the law was. (In actual fact it turned out that it was an error on the part of the reporter who wrote the story, that in fact Google had evaluated the situation correctly and acted correctly, but hadn't been able to fully explain the decision because the explanation would have violated privacy rights of people mentioned on the page in question.)

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[bickerdyke]

Thanks to a prior ruling (in the same case) the source is explicitly protected by press freedom.

After losing that round at court, that spanish guy who went broke years ago simply kept on sueing the next in line, which happend to be Google.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're still subject to the legal systems of the countries they operate on.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's okay for Google to keep profiting off illegal content by continuing to provide ads alongside search results to and snippets of that content until someone has managed to track down and deal with the source?

Here's a better idea, why not allow people to go after both? Oh right, that's exactly what this all allows.

Google doesn't get protection just because it's convenient, it still has obligations under the law and quite rightly so too.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect, if they want to operate in Europe they have to follow local laws. Same as any other country, if they want to operate in the US they also have to follow US law. Unless you believe Google should be above the law?

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any one who attempts to extend punishment for crime beyond time served by convicted person should be held civilly and even criminally liable for double jeopardy no matter where in society this is found to happen. Internet search engines are no exception. Having served time handed down by judicial process, a convicted person is said to have paid their debt to society. Courts should take a very dim view of the injustice when others usurp those sentences willfully, knowing that such action could bring harm or hardship by adding their brand of additional punishment intended to last beyond that debt to society deemed paid in full by the sentencing court.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Opportunist]

Removing stuff putting people who don't want to be in the public into the public would do.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Opportunist]

Your strawman doesn't work out too well either. Try again with an example where the victim isn't the culprit of something else.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Opportunist]

Yes. Of course. Try to convince the hoster in the country the name of which ends in -stan that your problem is of any importance.

Hint: You don't pay for the server. The person slandering you does. And, well, that's what you get when you export capitalism without ensuring a stable legal system first...

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[king neckbeard]

I suspect that the overwhelming majority of the requests are aimed at sites from domestic sources, with a large share of the remainder being in the EU. For most people, there aren't random Russian sites hosting slanderous articles about them, and even if there are, they probably aren't on the first page of a local Google search.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[king neckbeard]

If the content is illegal, they can take down at the source, and it will be removed shortly from Google automatically. If the content is legal, then they aren't profiting off illegal content.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Opportunist]

Actually, it's more likely that the source is in the US (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, ...). They might comply eventually, but it would remain in the search index of Google for a while.

Plus, if I really wanted to ruin someone's reputation, rest assured that the server I rent would be somewhere in Genericstan.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[king neckbeard]

Actually, it's more likely that the source is in the US (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, ...). They might comply eventually, but it would remain in the search index of Google for a while.

If it's Facebook or Twitter, they both have European offices, so would probably comply fairly quickly, and something from ten years ago on either site probably wouldn't be on the first page of Google results.

Plus, if I really wanted to ruin someone's reputation, rest assured that the server I rent would be somewhere in Genericstan.

But why would Google point to your server? You are creating a ridiculous hypothetical here. You want a slanderous or insulting article based in a country unfriendly to yours on the first page of Google results. That is certainly not anywhere close to representative of the norm for these requests.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[Opportunist]

Not the norm? You might remember various Google-Bombs involving someone famous, where you would get a ton of other search results on his name yet still it was very possible to connect him with some less than favorable search results. How much easier do you think it becomes when your target has a not too common name? Certainly it would be nontrivial to get the front page for "John Smith" but a name that would usually not return any sensible results except for something akin to firstname.lastname@gmail.com it would be quite easy to whip up something that gets the frontpage easily.

Re:What right do they have anyway?

[king neckbeard]

The norm is going to news articles. Most other stuff would be already well covered under slander law.

I know Santorum was Google bombed, but that was an ongoing, concentrated effort by a lot of people. Yes, it's possible that for people with interesting names but boring lives could piss off someone who is going to set up an offshore site and then get Google to put it on the front page, but having to have all of those factors means it probably hasn't happened yet even once.

Reasonable

[Frosty Piss]

Google's approach to this is reasonable. Criminals and public officials voluntarily give up a level of privacy due to their voluntary status as criminals and public officials.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that like there's a difference most of the time.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Criminals ... voluntarily give up a level of privacy due to their voluntary status as criminals...

We're all criminals, and many of those laws are completely immoral. Just because a bunch of politicians decide you deserve to be punished doesn't mean you volunteered for anything.

I'll admit that SOME criminals do create a public interest - like murderers - but not all criminals, and certainly not someone who was caught with a huge bag of weed.

Re:Reasonable

[buro9]

Ignoring public officials, that seems a very American view on how to treat criminals.

If someone is caught for a petty crime 15 years ago, should it be returned against a search history now if they have never committed another offence?

The law as it stands in most of Europe doesn't delete the record of such a crime having happened, but does hide that information to encourage offenders to rehabilitate and become a non-criminal and regular member of society. Without the prospect of ever being able to live normally once an indiscretion has occurred, what would motivate an offender to stop offending? There's a sweet spot between the first crime and the third petty crime in which you could deter someone from that life of crime, but after that point and after a jail sentence you are unlikely to reform that person. But without the option of rehabilitation you are unlikely to reform *any* offender.

This would also allow nation states to use the increasing threat of police intrusion as a deterrence and counter-opposition tool. Any arrest and any record that can be made to stick would reverberate forwards in time affecting that person in numerous ways... if petty offences cannot be forgotton or moved on from.

Once you accept that for some petty crimes (i.e. drunk and disorderly on a stag do that got out of hand, or something equally likely that it could entrap almost anyone) the search engine should reflect the sensible law that states this should be forgotten by almost everyone (not those in certain positions)... then where is the line drawn?

At one extreme murderers should not be forgotten, nor convicted rapists... but at the other end speeding offences, drunk and disorderly, shoplifting, those shouldn't upend a life. Somewhere between those points is the fuzzy line where stuff on one side should be forgotten, other stuff remembered.

Before this ruling Google ignored that line and treated everyone to the joy of living forever with the consequences of their actions without ever being able to make good. After this ruling, Google are forced to apply some basis for allowing some people to move on.

Then of course... where to start with public officials. Those who wish the world to be a better place and work towards it don't deserve a lack of privacy. They certainly need to be transparent in their roles and to sustain trust in their position, but these are different things. A fuzzy line appears once more, intrusions on the identity of the children of a public official is too much, they never voluntarily agreed to give up a level of privacy, and yet no questioning of the financial situation of an official is too little as their trust should be earned and not presumed.

In both cases, either extreme (no privacy nor right to be forgotten, full privacy and past deleted) is clearly wrong.

Re:Reasonable

[LoRdTAW]

So you are saying a person convicted of possessing drugs deserves to keep that criminal status for life? Even for a bit of pot? Absurd thinking.

Re:Reasonable

[davydagger]

not quite. In europe, former criminals have a right to move on with their lives after being reformed, and have their past crimes forgotten about so they can start new lives without interference, and you know, mabey not go back to jail.

Google also complies with 98% of requests from the US government, without really weighing moral implications of US law.

Re:Reasonable

[TheCarp]

> The law as it stands in most of Europe doesn't delete the record of such a crime having happened, but does hide
> that information to encourage offenders to rehabilitate and become a non-criminal and regular member of
> society. Without the prospect of ever being able to live normally once an indiscretion has occurred, what would
> motivate an offender to stop offending?

You nailed it exactly; if we offer those prospect to former criminals who have paid their "debt to society" then they are likely to not re-offend, which is just terrible in terms of job prospects for police and prison gaurds.

Shit many of our laws and policies exist specifically to create bodies to mill through the system, why would we want to provide any means of escape? Think of the prison gaurd's children!

Re:Reasonable

[tomhath]

So you are saying a person convicted of possessing drugs deserves to keep that criminal status for life?

Unless a judge seals the record, a conviction is a public record. So yes.

Whether or not being convicted of possession of a small amount of pot is important to the person doing the search is another matter.

Re:Reasonable

[Frosty Piss]

The Europeans should not be attacking Google for indexing what is available on the Internet, they should be talking to the people that put that information on the Internet in the first place.

Re:Reasonable

[Opportunist]

So I get it you're going to be cheerleader when some copyright crusaders want to install a public database of everyone they catch filesharing?

Re:Reasonable

[Br00se]

Then what is the issue with the old record being out there? If Europeans are as eager to forgive and forget past crimes as you suggest, then they won't hold it against someone and no harm is caused.

Re:Reasonable

[PapayaSF]

Google's approach to this is reasonable. Criminals and public officials voluntarily give up a level of privacy due to their voluntary status as criminals and public officials.

I agree, but I dislike this whole "right to be forgotten" thing. Yes, for some people it sucks to have bad/old information on the internet, but in effect what's happening here is various people demanding censorship of information about themselves, and then Google deciding whether or not to comply. Are we sure we know what their standards are, and that they will be applied fairly? The opportunities for bias are obvious: will a request to remove (say) an old bit of dirt on someone associated with a cause or political party that Google likes will be treated the same way as dirt on someone associated with a cause or political party that Google doesn't like?

Plus, there's a slippery slope. Now that politicians know they can force Google to censor results, why not expand that for "the good of society"? How long before some politician decides that Google users shouldn't be able to search for things deemed to be "racist" or "sexist" or "hate speech" or "climate denial" or whatever?

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

In the original case that triggered the "right to be forgotten" ruling, the person did do just that. The argument from the newspaper involved was that a record of fact would not be edited.

The person did not dispute that the fact occurred, merely that by it being published at the top of the search engine placement it's effect had not diminished with time and was still being felt by the person as other third parties took the information to be current and used it against them.

The people affected by this don't seem to be objecting to the past (and historical record existing), but only it's impact on the present.

In Sweden, for example, all tax records are a matter of public record. If you were Swedish I could go through the process of looking up your data. But that process isn't automated to the point that the knowledge of that data could be used against you by everyone... it would take some effort on my part, and some right (I understand only Swedish citizens can ask for the data) to access it.

What the "right to be forgotten" does is attempt to balance access to the historical record such that the access does not unduly cause harm to individuals, whilst at the same time attempting to keep public information about certain acts that shouldn't be forgotten.

As I argue above, it is not as if everything should be hidden, but nor that nothing should. There is a fuzzy line but in the past those who provided access to such information did too good a job of that to the detriment of the people. Given that Google reject 58% of requests, they are probably now getting it more right than wrong.

Re:Reasonable

[JackieBrown]

If you are violating an unjust law, then why would you want to hide the fact that you were standing up for your rights? I'm assuming by the time you are considered a criminal, you are already known by the authorities.

Re:Reasonable

[JackieBrown]

They'd rather attack an American company than look in the mirror.

Re:Reasonable

[Frosty Piss]

The people affected by this don't seem to be objecting to the past (and historical record existing), but only it's impact on the present.

This is the consequence of bad behavior: People get to know about it, there are repercussions in society for behaving badly. You don't get to behave badly and then demand that people forget about your bad behavior because it in inconvenient for you . That's not the way things work.

Re:Reasonable

[squiggleslash]

Absolutely not. Copyright infringers should stay in jail where they belong, lest they re-offend.

Think of the children!

Re:Reasonable

[The Ickle Jones]

If you are violating an unjust law, then why would you want to hide the fact that you were standing up for your rights?

Because not everyone who violates unjust laws wants to be the leader of a movement or risk being destroyed. Some people just want to get on with their lives while occasionally ignoring ridiculous laws.

Re:Reasonable

[Jason Levine]

My oldest son (11) seems to be constantly in a state of learning this lesson. He'll do something wrong, get a warning, do it again, and get a punishment. At that point, he'll rail about how unfair it is that he is punished and how we should give him one more chance - conveniently ignoring the one chance he got before.

Granted, my son is 11. At this age, they push boundaries and try to see what they can get away with and what is socially acceptable. One wonders what the excuse is for the grown men and women who seem to think that all of their past behaviors should just get forgotten because they want "just one more chance."

(NOTE: People should definitely have the chance for redemption. We shouldn't judge someone because of one small mistake they made 10 years ago if they turned their life around since then. However, if you've done something really bad or committed a crime repeatedly, you shouldn't get to "make everyone forget" and start fresh.)

Re:Reasonable

[reikae]

I don't know about eagerness to forgive and all that, but surely the search results aren't limited to Europeans? So also people who presumably aren't eager to forgive and move on would also see the results, which would be seen as an issue. Or does Google return wildly different results (assuming the query is specific enough) depending on the user's country?

Re:Reasonable

[Jason Levine]

Furthermore, how long until a company decides that Google should remove those bad reviews of their products because they are insulting to the company and cast the company in a bad light? Never mind that the product is garbage and possibly harmful... Those mentions of this fact online need to be suppressed!

Re:Reasonable

[Frosty Piss]

Granted, my son is 11.

Your anecdotal argument is irrelevant, your son is a young juvenile, which as you well know, are held to different standards that young adults and adults. For young adults and adults who do bad things, there are different consequences than a young juvenile would expect, and those consequences are generally proportional to the bad thing the young adult or adult has done.

But the real issue here is indexing publicly available data. These people that want to be forgotten need to talk to the people that are making this data public, not the people who are accessing in in a completely legal way and indexing it.

Re:Reasonable

[Rhywden]

Riiight. Because US sex offenders lists contain people who made the mistake of drunkenly pissing against a wall in public... As long as you have those laws, your country doesn't get to be upset about anything regarding people who want to be forgotten.

Not to mention that US laws actually allows the prosecution of minors when their nude shot of themselves gets into the public internet. Because they created child pornography, or so the dubious logic goes.

Re:Reasonable

[AvitarX]

In my state they pay them (prisoners) less than minimum wage to compete with private business.

Re:Reasonable

[Frosty Piss]

Riiight. Because US sex offenders lists contain people who made the mistake of drunkenly pissing against a wall in public...

Bullshit. Cite a reliable news source on that one.

Not to mention that US laws actually allows the prosecution of minors when their nude shot of themselves gets into the public internet.

We're talking about Google's response to the European "right to be forgotten", not US laws.

Can you stay on-topic? Or are you one of these one-topic fanatics that tie every subject into your obsession?

Re:Reasonable

[Cinnamon Beige]

Ignoring public officials, that seems a very American view on how to treat criminals.

If someone is caught for a petty crime 15 years ago, should it be returned against a search history now if they have never committed another offence?

The law as it stands in most of Europe doesn't delete the record of such a crime having happened, but does hide that information to encourage offenders to rehabilitate and become a non-criminal and regular member of society. Without the prospect of ever being able to live normally once an indiscretion has occurred, what would motivate an offender to stop offending? There's a sweet spot between the first crime and the third petty crime in which you could deter someone from that life of crime, but after that point and after a jail sentence you are unlikely to reform that person. But without the option of rehabilitation you are unlikely to reform *any* offender.

By that logic, it might actually be best to have a flat 'privacy until otherwise' requirement from the start--the public record is sealed as to names until the Nth petty offense or 1st major offense by the same person, unless the offender decides otherwise. (The police records can have names, but those shouldn't be accessible by the general public via Google, Bing, or the ilk ever.)

[...]

Once you accept that for some petty crimes (i.e. drunk and disorderly on a stag do that got out of hand, or something equally likely that it could entrap almost anyone) the search engine should reflect the sensible law that states this should be forgotten by almost everyone (not those in certain positions)... then where is the line drawn?

That sounds like more a reason to be able to request the indexed report be at least redacted, which is why I suggest a shield protecting the names of everybody: once it's on the internet, it's there forever. Getting search engines to delist it won't actually fix the problem.

At one extreme murderers should not be forgotten, nor convicted rapists... but at the other end speeding offences, drunk and disorderly, shoplifting, those shouldn't upend a life. Somewhere between those points is the fuzzy line where stuff on one side should be forgotten, other stuff remembered.

Couldn't the same logic apply to stuff where names ought to be named, and ought not? Protecting people's privacy from an earlier point would make this line a lot less fuzzy, and a right to privacy ought to exist just as much as a right to be forgotten.

[...]

Then of course... where to start with public officials. Those who wish the world to be a better place and work towards it don't deserve a lack of privacy. They certainly need to be transparent in their roles and to sustain trust in their position, but these are different things. A fuzzy line appears once more, intrusions on the identity of the children of a public official is too much, they never voluntarily agreed to give up a level of privacy, and yet no questioning of the financial situation of an official is too little as their trust should be earned and not presumed.

In both cases, either extreme (no privacy nor right to be forgotten, full privacy and past deleted) is clearly wrong.

Some of this is very much a modern problem, as people feel quite entitled to intrude or authorizing the intrusion upon others' privacy. The right to be forgotten is useful, but it may overall be more practical to enforce first the right to privacy as a proactive right to be forgotten; with how social media works, a reactive right to be forgotten may simply no longer be possible.

Once it hits someplace like Tumblr, the only way it's going to manage to be forgotten is if somebody manages to pressure the service into removing all of the reblogs as well as the original post.

Re:Reasonable

[AmiMoJo]

That's a hopelessly inefficient way of doing it. Contacting every site, in an age where most just repost material from each other, would be like trying to go to every library in the country to remove their microfiche copies of old newspaper articles. Must better to simply make the information hard to find. That had the added advantage of allowing someone really looking to still find it, if it happens to be important in the future.

Re:Reasonable

[Registered Coward v2]

The Europeans should not be attacking Google for indexing what is available on the Internet, they should be talking to the people that put that information on the Internet in the first place.

The problem is that would create a large backlash from a lot of people who, for a variety of reasons, would find such requests unreasonable. Google, and other search engines, are unable to mobilize such responses and thus a more palatable target. That it is a US company is just a bonus.

Re:Reasonable

[jopsen]

Google's approach to this is reasonable.

Absolutely,
Also note that the results are not fully removed, they just won't show up for some keywords.
It's really quiet reasonable that a rape victim can has not to have an article about incident show up, when you google the victims name.
In particularly important when the victim decide to look for a job 10 or 20 years down the road.
Keep in mind the article may still show up googling the perpetrators name...

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

No they deserve a bullet to the head.

Hi knightstorm, see you are still advocating for the mass murder of millions, if not billions, of people. That's quite the Hitler complex you've got going there. Might want to see a psychiatrist about it.

Re:Reasonable

[davydagger]

not quite how that works. Thats like saying we don't need laws against murder because most Americans don't murder people.

This is about google complying with european law, and it selectively enforcing european's rights based on its own perogatives, basicly its rather American view on criminal justice which revolves around the witch hunt, and very harsh black and white theories, that people are either good or bad, and its really a waste of time trying to reform criminals.

Again, they don't challenge American laws like the DMCA, and NSA/FBI security letters under freedom of speech or right to privacy.

If they complied with all laws in countries they operated in, and stated such, they'd be forgiven as working within the system

If they complied with none of them, and held universal principles like Free speech, it'd be awesome, and unbiased.

If google refused to recognize the authority of any country of which it did no business in, again, fair for not letting a country excede its own jurisdiction, and enforce laws outside its boundries.

But what google is telling the world, is that they are an American company, and follow American laws, unquestionablly, while disregarding laws everywhere else, even in their overseas operations. The issue is that American law, byzantine American laws are being made to apply world wide, to everyone else, with little or no recourse.

Re:Reasonable

[davydagger]

they could be, because google has localized search engines for just about every country it does business in. They can, and do filter content based on local laws of various countries.

They've made no bones about blocking various content in various countries due to laws like the DMCA.

Re:Reasonable

[Demonantis]

In Ontario the employer performs a police records check. And there is an enhanced version for caretakers of children. That is more than enough. A search engine isn't the appropriate tool for this matter.

Re:Reasonable

[complete loony]

Perhaps we need the ability to add meta data to web content that informs google of keywords that should not be used in the index. I'm not saying everyone would use such a feature responsibly, but having this option could be useful in some cases.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

"They'd rather attack a Dutch Antilles company than look in the mirror."
FTFY

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

People forget. Now you screw up once and yor life is over. It might not even be your fault. Good luck finding a job if your name brings up some childporn case as the first hit. "John Due suspected!" with your face. Even if later investigation cleared you that won't help a bit. This law is good, although very difficult to apply right. But I guess it's better than nothing.

Re:Reasonable

[bickerdyke]

Agree.

But still putting that into the hand of one commercial search engine is the wrong way to do so. That "making hard to find" should also start at the source. My suggestion would be to have the newspaper archive use an additional robots.txt/metadata like X-ARCHIVE:True to indicate that this site may be indexed, but contains out of date information that should NOT show up unless someone does a specific archived/cached search request

PRO:
Available to all search engines. You don't have to go to all serach engines to have something hidden from simple searches
Historical information still available and easily searchable - if desired so
Searching uiser knows in advance that he will receive outdated information

CON: ?

Re:Reasonable

[TheCarp]

I bet there are no perverse incentives there. You know its funny, you always hear how big our prison population is, or maybe how much it balooned, 700% since the early 1970s. I was curious, what happens when you look at population growth over that time...surely you would expect some growth....

Turns out about 30%. A 30% larger population has 700% more people incarcerated.

And that is just prison population. Imagine what that means for the much larger population of people on probation and parole, restricted in their movements, subject to drug tests which, just on false positive rate alone means they are risking a nonzero chance of reincarceration for no reason at all. It is absolute insanity.

And beyond the fact that they criminalize nonviolent behavior and put addicts in jail for no real good reason, my sister is a prison gaurd, most of the job is taking care of the mentally disabled since prisons replaced all the closed down asylums.

So which is worst inventing a crime for little other reason than to selectively enforce it against people who can't fight back with lawyers as an excuse to create jobs to support the lifestyle of the well off suburbanites, or using this same scheme to abuse the mentally disabled?

Personally, it beats me, but, conveniently, the same criminals did both at the same time.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is that Google is complying with the European law in this case. The requests being referred to are simply requests from citizens, not court orders. Google is supposed to use their judgment. If the claimant things they were denied in error they can get a court order and Google will comply with it.

Re:Reasonable

[wired_parrot]

Before this ruling Google ignored that line and treated everyone to the joy of living forever with the consequences of their actions without ever being able to make good. After this ruling, Google are forced to apply some basis for allowing some people to move on.

The problem is European politicians abdicated their responsibility to set clear guidelines for this ruling and left it up to Google to determine who does or doesn't live with the consequences of their actions. If the courts or legislators had set clear standards for applying this rule - such as specifying a period of time, say 7 years, after which records are to be forgotten, I'd be fine with it. As it is, this enormous power is in the hands of individual search companies, each applying their own differing standards. There's no clear framework for the victim of a crime to appeal against a criminal who wants to be forgotten, for example. These are decisions to be made by the courts and by the people through their legislators, not by a private company.

Re:Reasonable

[AvitarX]

Oh I agree, it looks a lot like slavery when you get into the demographics.

Though obviously there is choice in the matter, and some compensation, it's still really bizarre to me that they pay prisoners less than minimum wage to compete with private industry.

Re:Reasonable

[david_thornley]

Bad behavior as a youth shouldn't ruin somebody's whole life, though. There should be repercussions, and (for many offenses) the guilty party should get a chance to start over.

The idea here is that: (1) Young person commits minor crime/files for bankruptcy/something like that; (2) Young person serves time/accumulates years since bankruptcy/whatever; (3) Person getting older is not haunted by that for the rest of his or her life. In the original case, a man had gone bankrupt in the past, and the bankruptcy was beyond the point where a credit reporting service would be allowed to report it. Unfortunately, a Google search easily found the bankruptcy, hurting the man's ability to make a living. The man's ability to start over was seriously compromised.

Fifteen years ago, no web search would have found any of this information. The bankruptcy would not have been reported, since a credit check wouldn't have shown it. In some cases (depending on country), a minor crime would be removed from the available record. Somebody could screw up, pay the price, and start over. This is a GOOD thing.

Re:Reasonable

[david_thornley]

Thing is, the idea is to make it hard to find in a particular way. If I'm searching for bankruptcies in general, I could find the guy who filed the first case. This isn't a problem. If I searched on the guy's name, the bankruptcy article wouldn't show up. At least that's how I understand it.

Re:Reasonable

[bickerdyke]

Exactly. And that's what you don't want to turn up if someone does a casual search with your name. On the other hand, he can't expect to have historical facts (like his foreclosure) purged from the historic archives. That was 1984.

And we ALL need to learn that a bankrupcy 20 years ago hardly effects his current financial situation.

G00gle: Self appointed jury, judge and custodian

[Trachman]

They can do this until they get another legal spank once again. Who is Google anyway to decide the "public interest"? Since when the public interest trumps the private interest and how and why Google self-appointed to be the judge and the jury to decide what is relevant or what is not?

The technology exists and is used

[i kan reed]

Social engineering, political pressure, and the fact that the worst people are most interested in covering up their past means this will be abused. Every sane and pragmatic consideration to prevent abuse will have workarounds well known to scummy specialists, who know who to ask, who to lie to, and how to submit requests.

Re:The technology exists and is used

[gurps_npc]

The point of cleaning up a messy room or of arresting criminals is not to keep everything spotless.

Instead it is to manage the mess so that it does not get out of hand.

You personally may choose to live in a world with no one ever cleans up the mess. But the rest of us like having the dirt cleaned up sometimes, even if it never gets rid of all the dirt.

The same thing applies to Forget Me requests.

Re:The technology exists and is used

[i kan reed]

Huh? I'm just saying abuse will happen. I guess that does imply an attitude that it shouldn't be done.

And maybe some sort of plan to get around abusers. Not sure how though.

Re:The technology exists and is used

[Archangel Michael]

The problem isn't cleaning up the mess. The problem is throwing away a valuable item when you're cleaning up the mess. This is why I have taught my kids, that if they don't want to throw something away, is to have a place for it, and ALWAYS put it in its rightful place. This creates an Order from which everything else becomes easier.

I've seen shops where everything is left out and never put away. I've seen shops that are nice and neat and everything is in place. Guess which one spends more time looking for things than keeping it straight in the first place.

Re:The technology exists and is used

[swillden]

But the rest of us like having the dirt cleaned up sometimes, even if it never gets rid of all the dirt.

The same thing applies to Forget Me requests.

The point is that it will be manipulated to throw out some heirlooms along with the dirt.

In this case they're heirlooms that someone doesn't like and wants gone, but they're also objects of value to the rest. No, the analogy doesn't work all that well, but it's your (lousy) analogy.

Re:The technology exists and is used

[Rhywden]

The same argument can be made about the death penalty. As the US justice system has shown repeatedly there are quite a lot of innocent people on death row.

Now the question becomes: Do you rather want to abolish the death penalty so that no innocent people are killed - or do you want to make sure that criminals are killed and accept the innocent victimes as collateral damage?

Benjamin Franklin stated: "It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer". I find it interesting that the US have moved into the completely opposite direction.

Re:The technology exists and is used

[drinkypoo]

The point of cleaning up a messy room or of arresting criminals is not to keep everything spotless.

Instead it is to manage the mess so that it does not get out of hand.

But that's just ass-backwards. Take the example of a person having an article about their rape removed because it contains their name. Well, it also contains the name of the rapist. Congratulations to them; because they did not want it known that they suffered a tragedy, information that people could actually benefit from has been lost. Oh sure, the information is still out there, but how will anyone find it without google? This is managing the mess so that it gets out of hand.

You personally may choose to live in a world with no one ever cleans up the mess.

This is not cleaning up the mess. The mess is still there: it's the world we live in. This is ignoring the mess. You cannot clean it up by ignoring it. It will leach and seep into all other aspects of your life.

We cannot make the world a better place by pretending that it is already a better place.

Re:The technology exists and is used

[david_thornley]

As I understand it....

John Doe raped Jane Roe, and there was a newspaper article on it. Neither John Doe nor Jane Roe want to be connected with the article, such that the article shows up when they're searched for, but Jane has a good reason and John doesn't. Therefore, Google changes the search index so a search on "Jane Roe" doesn't find the article, but a search on "John Doe" does.

Re:The technology exists and is used

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the question becomes: Do you rather want to abolish the death penalty so that no innocent people are killed - or do you want to make sure that criminals are killed and accept the innocent victimes as collateral damage?

We have a third option!

Beg forgiveness from the cloud and have our sins forgiven and forgotten (thanks South Park). Did you consider that maybe state powers would stop killing people unjustly and that your mention of this hurts their feelings?

Re:G00gle: Self appointed jury, judge and custodia

[Shados]

Yup. If this had to be done (I disagree, but let say it has to...), then you need a judge or something to make the call, not some random underpaid bozo making the call. The time it would take would also ensure a lot less requests go through...

Re:Creating the "Anti-Search" and Other Dark Matte

[NotInHere]

In order to annihilate n KG of matter, you needed n KG of antimatter. You couldn't even annihilate this message on your computer with all combined antimatter, the mass of the memory cells this post is stored on your computer exceeds produced antimatter mass.

(At least I think so)

responsiblity

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies (rather it be Google, Target, Home Depot, etc) should be responsible and liable for leaks/lost of private information which may or may not cause damage to another person's life, career, relationship, etc. In the case of Google, it is their responsibility that the data they choose to release to the public in searches should not damage an individual life. This involves individuals who are indirectly linked to a criminal (victim) or political events. It is reasonable to ask Google to honor those requests.

should be 100%

[Anonymous Coward]

they wanted to be forgotten... it seems like google forgot to forget about 42% of them and remember to do what they were asked to do.

DO THEY WANT TO BE FORGOTTEN OR NOT?!

Re:Creating the "Anti-Search" and Other Dark Matte

[Opportunist]

Well, technically it's more some sort of "it-doesn't-matter"...

More Importantly...

[horm]

I think the more important fact is that Google is actually complying with 42% of these requests. That number seems extraordinarily high to me.

Re:G00gle: Self appointed jury, judge and custodia

[TWX]

I don't know, I think that it's appropriate to allow victims the right to not be remembered as such. Perpretrators that were convicted, "on the record", don't generally deserve that same right. I will be happy to acknowledge that those that had their convictions overturned, or after a period of good behavior or the completion of court-mandated courses had their felonies voided in favor of misdemeanors, would also deserve to qualify to not be so readily remembered. Beyond that, since the verdict in court is supposed to be public record and for the public, I don't think that it's right to remove those verdicts.

There is no "Right to be forgotten"

[mi]

The right "to be forgotten" does not exist — you have no right to affect the contents of other people's brains, notebooks, and databases.

Sure, Google is a "KKKorporation", but you have no more right to demand, they forget about you, than you can you force your ex to forget the good times you've once had together. And, yes, wiping out individual's memories — selectively — is already possible.

Switzerland

[SmilingBoy]

"But in Switzerland, a finance professional who asked Google to remove more than 10 links on his arrest and conviction for financial crimes had his request denied."

Would such a request not already be denied just because Switzerland is not in the European Union?

And by the way, most of the comments here seem to be unhappy about the fact that Google is making these decisions. Guess what, Google doesn't want this either. They fought this tooth and nail up to the highest European Court, but the court decided to force them to remove requests under certain (but not clearly defined) circumstances. Read more here (I haven't reviewed the article so can't vouch for accuracy though): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

Re:Switzerland

[Solandri]

Google doesn't want this either. They fought this tooth and nail up to the highest European Court, but the court decided to force them to remove requests under certain (but not clearly defined) circumstances.

That's the thing I find baffling about some of these EU court decisions.

EU: "Google is abusing its near-monopoly position in search. This needs to stop."
Google: "Ok, what exactly do you want us to stop doing?"
EU: "Um, we don't know. Why don't you come up with some suggestions and we'll tell you if it's agreeable?"
Google: "OK, how about this?"
EU: "Hmm, no, we want more."
Google: "How about this then?"
EU (to Google's competitors): "Do you think this is enough?"
Google's competitors (sensing an opportunity): "Hell no!"
EU: "No, something more."
Google: [exasperated sigh] "what about if we do this?"
etc.

EU: "You need to remove people from your search results if they have a legitimate reason."
Google: "Ok, just tell us what's a legitimate reason."
EU: "Um, we don't know. Why don't you decide and we'll tell you if you're doing it wrong."
Google: [exasperated sigh]

Methinks the EU court really, really badly needs to adopt the concept in the U.S. Constitution of the right of the defendant to know what crime they're being accused of.

The most destructive and demoralizing relationship I've had with the government was a health inspector who basically made up rules on the fly. Including one which the fire marshal later told us was a fire code violation. And another where the serving table manufacturer told us, "We sell this product to restaurants all over the country, and we have never had a health department request that modification." But there's nothing we could do about it because she had the power to shut down our restaurant that very day, leading to us being bankrupt within a couple months. We had to comply with her inane requests if we wanted to stay in business.

Re:Switzerland

[SmilingBoy]

The former procedure you refer to is not with a court, but with the European Commission. On substance, I do agree with you, though that is especially bad form to rely so much on views of competitors rather than views of users.

Re:G00gle: Self appointed jury, judge and custodia

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is Google anyway to decide the "public interest"?

I know! I'm so tired of them returning "public interest" results when I search.

Google crawls and indexes the public Internet

[joh]

That's Google's job.

Still, stay with me and compare what Google does with this:

Some company develops a fleet of drones that hover over all public places, record everything that is said or done there and put it into a database indexed with all the metadata, searchable over the Internet. Is this OK? It's just public data!

Some company deploys lots of license number scanners that scan all public streets and record all cars driving through and indexes all that data together with GPS data and makes it available to everyone. Is this OK? It's just public data!

Someone develops an extensive system of crawlers that scan all of the public Internet and puts this into a database, searchable by everyone. Is this OK? It's just public data!

Face it, Google Search is a virtual drone that hovers over you, invisible, where ever you are in the public Internet. This virtual drone notes every page with your name in it and happily delivers to everyone a complete list of every page you wrote something with your name attached to it (or somebody else saying something about you).

Just because Google does what it does not mean it should be free to do as it pleases. If anyone would do the same with public data like license numbers or conversations held in public or all photos from cameras in public places you'd be up in arms.

"The right to be forgotten" should actually be named "the right to not be stalked in the public Internet". Just because something is public does not mean everybody should be allowed to record, scan and index all that data and make it searchable for everyone.

Note that "the right to be forgotten" does NOT mean that any data is removed. It just means that URLs you don't want to be shown when someone searches for your name is shown in the list of hits. Not more, not less. The data itself is still there, and you will even still find it with Google if you search for actual facts instead of the name of that person.

It's like a public search engine for license numbers that does not allow searching for license numbers (and then getting a full tracking profile for that car) but still allows searching for locations and then find all license numbers that drove through this location.

Re:Google crawls and indexes the public Internet

[AmiMoJo]

No need for an analogy, there are companies which gather data on people without their consent and are regulated by the law: credit rating agencies.

The law requires them to not report certain information they have, like old bankruptcies that the law considers no longer relevant. Banks are not allowed to use knowledge of old bankruptcies when evaluating customers, and credit reference agencies are not allowed to report them.

Re:Google crawls and indexes the public Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of your name is to identify you. If you don't want to be identified, don't use your name. The web is a giant poster board. Anyone can effectively access any part. Everything is one step away, viewable by all. There is no requirement to use your real name. I'd argue if you're using the same user names across different sites you want to be identified and shouldn't complain when you are. Other people can use the same name as you, but that only matters if you've built a large reputation using that name. If you've been using different names, the damage would be limited to the scope of that name. There's no way to control what other people do, you only have control over the things you do.

Your examples are flawed. There isn't a database with a complete record of all license plate movements. Google isn't creating any content, it's telling you where to find it. That's more like a company telling you to look at every intersection in the world so you can see license plates. I'd argue that if such a license plate database exists, it should viewable by all. That helps prevent it from being abused, allows the public to decide if it should exists, and gives everyone equal access.

Something existing and having access to it are too separate things. Google isn't creating content. The websites hosting the data are the ones who should be targeted with take-down requests. Killing the messenger is ineffective when message keeps broadcasting itself to anyone who goes near. Requiring Google to remove results is like sticking your fingers in our ears and humming. The annoying noise is still there.

Personally, I want to know if someone has had a crappy internet life or used to do stupid things as a kid. It gives me a more complete picture of the person. My mind is open enough that I know everyone makes mistakes and has issues. I'm more concerned about the people who are completely blank. Are they crazily religious? Are they so addicted to trivia that they often put their life ahead of those around them? Have they survived bullying as a kid and know how to respond now or will they crap themselves on their first bad boss? Did they breakdown from one embarrassing event, changed their name, and moved to a different city? I want people who can handle real mistakes and life issues. I don't actually dig that far into people's background, but I like it that I can if I find a need to. If I can do that for one person, it should be possible to do it for every person, including me.

Re:Google crawls and indexes the public Internet

[MacDork]

Your examples are flawed. There isn't a database with a complete record of all license plate movements.

LOL. I stopped reading here. You are so naive. There are multiple different databases with a complete record of all license plate movements.

Re:Google crawls and indexes the public Internet

[joh]

Your examples are flawed. There isn't a database with a complete record of all license plate movements. Google isn't creating any content, it's telling you where to find it.

And Google does that by building a complete record of all the public Internet. Or do you think Google is going out and crawling all of the Internet only after you've typed a search string?

The public Internet is as public as the license plates that are driven around are public and as conversations in the open are public. What Google does is like scanning all streets all the time or listening in to all public conversations all the time. And then save it and index it and make it searchable for everyone.

These examples aren't flawed, they're fairly correct. If you think they're flawed you don't understand what Google does.

Re:Google crawls and indexes the public Internet

[Xest]

It's not even about not being able to report them, CRAs are just out and out not legally allowed to even store that information past a certain time. Once that period has elapsed companies must delete that data from their databases.

Data such as county court judgements in the UK are still held on file as part of public record past this point but corporations are not allowed to retain copies of or use that information and are hence not allowed to supply it forward as part of a credit report. I believe the cut off is currently 7 years for CCJs in the UK.

FWIW this isn't even part of any special laws regarding CRAs, this is just the plain old Data Protection Act (the UK's implementation of the European Data Protect Directive 1995). The only special treatment CRAs get is that they're allowed to gather and process personal credit data without first having to seek permission of the data subject - they can't even pass it on unless it's part of a formal request by the data subject (i.e. an application for a credit card). Everything else in the DPA still applies- they must hold it securely, it must only be kept if it's relevant to their job, it must be correct, it must be recent enough to be relevant and so on.

20 years there was no index

[aepervius]

20 years ago if you were caught giving a hand job to a guy in a corner, maybe youw ere drunk or whatnot, maybe it would ruin your life for a year or two but that would be over , unless somebody dedicated a good amount of time to search paper clip it would fall into forgetness. nowadays the slightiest stuff is kept forever. A society which does not forget is one which will not forgive minor transgression. Now that handjob will hunt you forever maybe even stopping you getting a good job. An unforgiving society is harsh and one I does not want to live in and apparently many others. Also remember freedom is not found at the middle road where everybody find everything acceptable, and reporting would be borring. Freedom lies on the side of the road, where the shadows are , but still on the lgeal side, and what is or what is not accepted by society lies. If you enforce an unforgiving society and one with 100% memory then you WILL lose freedom. In a way this is already hapenning in the US. I refuse to see that coming in europe. Long live teh right to be forgotten. I do not need it, but I will fight for that freedom for everybody.

Re:20 years there was no index

[Krishnoid]

20 years ago if you were caught giving a hand job to a guy in a corner, maybe youw ere drunk or whatnot, maybe it would ruin your life for a year or two but that would be over ... A society which does not forget is one which will not forgive minor transgression.

20 years from now, when the children born into the Internet are now middle-aged and running the show, and everybody will have their childhood indiscretions readily visible, will this still hold? Or will it be so commonplace that nobody will really care? Or will those who don't have anything juicy to show from their childhood be more a curiosity, rather than the status quo?

Re:20 years there was no index

[Immerman]

Alternately, in a society where nothing is ever forgotten perhaps we can finally relearn to forgive on a social level, and/or simply ignore that which is not relevant. How is a 20-yo public handjob relevant to anything today?

Re:20 years there was no index

[Anonymous Coward]

Or employees who take videos of themselves bathing in a fast food restaurant's sink.

While it may not be relevant for certain jobs many years after the fact, it would be relevant if they ever again applied at a food establishment.

Re:20 years there was no index

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtful. More likely in a society with an overabundance of dossiers we will see the same selective enforcement that we see in repressive countries that always seem to have an overabundance of laws. Politically inconvenient people can always be found to have committed some legal transgression or another. Meanwhile the scion of a wealthy family being considered for an executive position with a large company will mysteriously have his college cocaine habit not show up in his background check. Clearly that incident must have referred to somebody else with the same name or somesuch.

Re:20 years there was no index

[LessThanObvious]

I absolutely agree that it's better that things should be forgotten in many cases for many reasons. I do wonder if the search engine is entirely the right place to do the forgetting. Search engines typically index content because it exists. Does right to be forgotten also give a right to have content taken down? I mean can the website serving the content that is to be forgotten be issued a take down notice through any reasonable process? Just because Google forgets it doesn't mean other search engines follow suit. I just have to think that if the sites actually serving the content continue to keep it online then eventually it will, again find it's way into public view.

Re:20 years there was no index

[Anonymous Coward]

20 years from now, the children born into the Internet will believe everything they see on the Internet because the fappening happened. They will believe things that they find on the Internet that shouldn't be there is authentic.

Re:20 years there was no index

[Anonymous Coward]

An unforgiving society is harsh and one I does not want to live in and apparently many others...

Umm, society has always been unforgiving. Its just that knowledge is easily and freely acceptable. You and many others are just angry because judgement is swifter and consequences longer. So if you truly dont want to live here, take the way out. Just donate your stuff first/

Re:20 years there was no index

[bickerdyke]

I absolutely agree that it's better that things should be forgotten in many cases for many reasons. I do wonder if the search engine is entirely the right place to do the forgetting. Search engines typically index content because it exists. Does right to be forgotten also give a right to have content taken down?.

In this case: Explicitly no. In a related ruling in the same case, the website with the archived newspaper article is explicitly covered by freedom of press and has NOT to take donw anything.

But removing the link from the search engine will at least make uncovering 20 year old sins of your youth as difficult as it was when you had to spend the time in a dead-tree newspaper archive.

Re:20 years there was no index

[AmiMoJo]

Maybe individuals who know that person can forgive them, but if any employer has two similar candidates to choose from and one has a conviction for public indecency connected to their name they are unlikely to ignore it.

Re:20 years there was no index

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were convicted of a crime that is going to turn up on a background check with or without Google.

Re:20 years there was no index

[stub667]

The people who will be running the show in 20 years from now are not on Facebook. For a while now, the people running the show have been groomed for power. If you are a senator wanting to continue your dynasty, you send junior to private and exclusive schools and now days certainly don't let them near the Internet using their real name or real face. That embarrassing photo of your son would not only throw away everything you have invested, but also torpedo your own position of privilege. Not all trust fund kids are Paris Hilton.

The big question is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the EU allow them to cherry pick the ones that get deleted? This is a USA corporation after all; they are known to show the EU the middle finger where possible generally.

Re:The big question is..

[GuB-42]

They don't just allow them to cherry pick, they require them to.
As an European I would have preferred a middle finger, just to show how stupid the law is.

Re:The big question is..

[Xest]

As a European you obviously have no idea what the law protects you from if you're saying such a stupid thing.

Have a read here to get an understanding of how important data protection laws are and to understand what you're arguing against:

http://www.dataprotection.ie/d...

Despite what you say, you probably don't actually want to live in a world without data protection laws and there's no reason to think Google should be some special case that's immune to them.

Re:The big question is..

[GuB-42]

I am not saying that the "right to be forgotten" is bad. I'm saying that the law is stupid.
The really stupid part is that search engines have a say in what is and what is not a valid request. It shall be a judge's job.

Re:The big question is..

[Xest]

Judges do have the final say, but it's impossible for judges to assess every single data acquisition and processing by every company, it would be an impossible task. Companies have to make the first decision as to what is and isn't acceptable, and if a company is believed to have made a wrong choice then that is challenged by whichever party in court where a judge (or jury) does have a say.

Forget

[Hognoxious]

You could forget this latest redesign? Shit, I thought beta was bad.

P.S. If you can't design understandable icons - and you can't, and if you lived three lifetimes you still couldn't - then maybe use an old-fashioned thing called an alt-text.

UX scumbag nonces.

Reasonable - Not

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, reasonable, yeah right.
Unless you're wrongly convicted of a crime.

Google plays judge and jury with your life. No thank you.

Re:G00gle: Self appointed jury, judge and custodia

[Jason Levine]

I believe the European courts themselves appointed Google to head this task. They told Google to remove these requested references if they aren't in the "public interest." As far as I can see, there are four options:

1) Google removed everything. There is no filter and no attempts to curtail abuse of the system. If you request it removed, Google removes it, no questions asked. If this option were taken, the Google search index would rapidly become useless.

2) The European Court system handles each and every removal request and issues a ruling on each one. This would not only raise the cost of a removal request and the time required to approve/deny one, but it would seriously hamper court activities. The courts would get overloaded with requests.

3) You appoint a commission just for this purpose. Of course, said commission will likely grow highly political in nature and will be willing to approve requests from big campaign donors. "It's a shame that the story of my kid's DUI arrest keeps coming up in Google. If it were removed, I might see fit to donate a few million to your re-election campaign." In addition, a political party/movement in power might use it to suppress bad information about themselves and allow bad information about other parties/movements. ("Story about our corrupt party head? Removed. Leaked nude selfie of our rival's drunken underage daughter? Removal denied.")

4) Google is the arbitrator and can approve/deny as they see fit. If you disagree with them, you can either give up or take them to court. This is the current system. Is it perfect? Of course not, but if you accept the "right to be forgotten" as a necessity (which I don't but which the European court system said is one), then this is the best of all possible options.

Google Hydra Spying Monster Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

Boycott Google
Boycott Google

Boycotting Google

Those Google goons!

[iq145]

Who do they think they are? They think they can "decide" what level of privacy an average person is allowed?