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 "In evaluating a request, we will look at whether the results include outdated or inaccurate information about the person," Google said.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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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: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?

[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?

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

[Opportunist]

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

Re: What right do they have anyway?

[babyrat]

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

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...

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

[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

[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: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: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.

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 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 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.