Google Told To Expand Right To Be Forgotten

mpicpp writes with this news from the BBC: Google is under fresh pressure to expand the 'right to be forgotten' to its international .com search tool. A panel of EU data protection watchdogs said the move was necessary to prevent the law from being circumvented. Google currently de-lists results that appear in the European versions of its search engines, but not the international one. The panel said it would advise member states' data protection agencies of its view in new guidelines. However, a link is provided at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen offering an option to switch to the international .com version. This link does not appear if the users attempted to go to a regional version in the first place. Even so, it means it is possible for people in Europe to easily opt out of the censored lists.

Comments

some sharp knives in that European drawer

[Anonymous Coward]

Brought to you by the same people who invented Mandatory Data Retention, a politician's: we need to preserve accurate history for government control, but allow narcissistic individuals to enforce social forgetting. Only the powerful may control their own memory.

Re:some sharp knives in that European drawer

[MightyMartian]

All you're doing is delinking from a search engine. If someone else comes along and builds a search engine and spiders your false accusation, then your right back in.

The rule is moronic, passed down by malicious halfwits.

This is clearly futile...

[GoddersUK]

What's going through the EU's mind right now? "This is clearly futile, not working and doesn't stand a chance in hell of working... ...so let's do more!"?

I mean, seriously, what will they be doing next? Asking all proxies, VPNs, and TOR to filter "right to be forgotten" search results. All airlines and airports offering international flights will require memory wipers to remove any "right to be forgotten knowledge" from your brain. All libraries, archives, repositories and public records offices will be required to go through old paper copies of documents with tipex...

(Fun fact: "Right to be forgotten" censoring was basically Winston Smith's day job in 1984...)

Re:This is clearly futile...

[Tom]

What's going through the EU's mind right now?

Can't tell (not telepathic), but I'm in support of this right and I can tell you what I think: The Internet is full of half-truths and outright lies. Search engines do not deliver results based on the truth value of sites, but on popularity, page ranking and such. If, 10 years ago, you were arrested for child porn, with headlines in the newspapers. Three months later, charges were dropped, everyone apologized profoundly to you for the mistake, the government paid a ton of money for your troubles and the prosecutor who go your arrested lost his job.

Which part of this, do you think, will show up on Google, today?

We can do nothing about people remembering things wrong. But we can do something about search engines creating false impressions.

Maybe in the future, semantic web and intelligent agents will be able to show you the relevant context information and solve the problem. But until then, people's lives are being ruined and that problem needs a solution before they're dead, wouldn't you agree?

Re:This is clearly futile...

[fustakrakich]

No, you are advocating censorship, a non solution to a basic personal problem of people who believe everything they hear. They are the ones ruining lives. Deal with them. Leave Google alone! You only have the right to prevent information from being used against you, not the dispersal of the information. I'm always hoping we can achieve P2P internet that will be impossible to censor. Something to make the authorities squirm. That's the best way I know how to finally end this silly discussion every time the subject comes up. Censorship is always evil, without exception.

We can do nothing about people remembering things wrong.

To bad, they are the people who cause the damage and should be sanctioned. You are attacking the wrong guy. Please learn the difference between word and deed. They are as distinct as anything can be.

Re:This is clearly futile...

[drinkypoo]

Incorrect. If the court was saying to remove the page in question, then that would be forgetting things which are true.

However, the court action is directed at the association created by Google between a particular person and a page.

There is no functional difference; if you can't remember what you forgot, then you forgot it. The data might be out there someplace, but if you can't find it, then you can't make use of it.

No, it's about requiring search engines to stop returning irrelevant items about a person when asked for relevant items,

As the person initiating the search, I decide what is relevant.

Without this law, search engines could report results which are false and do harm with impunity.

No, no they couldn't, because you'd click on the links and you'd see the actual result. Search engines can only report what is there; they might report on it incorrectly, but you can always check up on them.

Send request to the site hosting the information

[jfdavis668]

Send the request to be forgotten to the site that actually hosts the information. That way it will disappear in all search engines.

Re:This is not about revisionism or censorship !

[physicsphairy]

I'm pretty sure for "most of our history" people have lived in the same rural communities where, not only did everyone who regularly encountered you have a pretty good running list of all your past major mistakes (which makes a great way to pass the time) but good luck outliving their memory, especially for the big ones. Identifying tattoos have been used as punishments since at least Roman times, and I'm not aware of any historical laws which really reflect the idea of a "right to be forgotten." Obviously anyone who could write could have gone out of their way to keep records on you at any point in history.

Which is not to immediately say this right to be anonymous is a bad idea, but I don't see how you could support it as some kind of social inheritance.

But note where you have gotten your ideas of anonymity. I assume you're from a modern urban area. There are so many people and so many things to keep track of that everyone is effectively anonymous unless someone goes to an effort to make it otherwise. But this same process is exactly what is happening with the internet. The more information which is provided the more your individual details are washed out. Believe it or not Google and the modern data age is making you *more anonymous.* Lives are not being ruined forever. As time goes on we are soon going to start having to reconcile with the fact that *everyone* is going to have embarassing crap online, not just the unlucky few. In all likelihood we are going to quickly move past it as a society, at least as much as we have ever done before.

As for the accusation of revisionism and censorship : this is the exact reason why the search engine are asked to remove stuff, and NOT the original publication. Because then the information is still reachable by the same OLD fashioned way we did before : old fashioned research.

And exactly how long do you think it is before someone wants the original publication delisted as well? Or before governments realize that there is *lots* of stuff they can think of good reasons to delist? How hard do you think it is to extend the capability? Since you're interested in how history informs the present, why don't you go back a couple hundred years or so and pick out a dozen governments you would trust to have this level of control over what information is presented to the public. Any contenders?

As far as I am concerned the major improvements and liberalization in many governments in recent years relates directly to an increase in public transparency and communication. To a large degree those things happened simply because they were outside the government's control to stop. Now we're back on the otherside of the pendulum where technology is returning power to control information into their hands. I think if you want to bet on their continued benevolence, then you aren't betting on history.