Google Loses 'Right To Be Forgotten' Case (bbc.com)

A businessman fighting for the "right to be forgotten" has won a High Court action against Google. BBC reports: The man, who has not been named due to reporting restrictions surrounding the case, wanted search results about a past crime he had committed removed from the search engine. The judge, Mr Justice Mark Warby, ruled in his favour on Friday. But he rejected a separate claim made by another businessman who had committed a more serious crime. The businessman who won his case was convicted 10 years ago of conspiring to intercept communications. He spent six months in jail. The other businessman, who lost his case, was convicted more than 10 years ago of conspiring to account falsely. He spent four years in jail.

Comments

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[RazorSharp]

The guy committed a crime. He served time, repaid his debt to society. Shouldn't he have, then, the right not to be marked as a criminal forever, in front of the world eyes?

That's the European attitude. Unfortunately, in the States, the exact opposite view is taken. People think they have a right to know who committed crimes so they can look up anyone who moves into the neighborhood, applies for a job, etc. Even if an individual gets his record expunged, the companies that do background checks don't delete/seal that record like the courts do.

In the States, the ability to brand someone as a criminal forever has its origins in Jim Crow laws. It's one of the reasons that the American South consists of large homogenous voting blocks (first it was Democrat, and since the Civil Rights Act it's been Republican). By making crime a scarlet letter, police, prosecutors, and the judiciary can target minorities and then enact voter disenfranchisement laws to keep them subjugated. This is why being "tough on crime" is a longstanding conservative agenda. It allows them to strip voting rights from their political enemies, maintain ghettos by limiting opportunities to African Americans (which maintains segregation), and provides them an excuse to maintain unequal hiring practices. This is why guys like Sessions are so adamantly against legalizing marijuana. Marijuana charges are the easiest way to get that scarlet letter on blacks and hippies.