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

Do we trust the legal system?

[hcs_$reboot]

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?

Re: Do we trust the legal system?

[WindBourne]

Are the records public elsewhere? If he is public in legal system, then no. Google should not be forced to do this.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[EndlessNameless]

That's not the real problem. This is the real problem:

"But he rejected a separate claim made by another businessman who had committed a more serious crime."

Google doesn't know what it needs to purge. That means a case-by-case review on every request, a potential law suit if the requester doesn't like their response, and potentially legal penalties on top of that when they're wrong.

The EU needs to make this simpler. They need to create a clear set of guidelines for what types of information must be "forgotten" and how a person can invoke their right.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[iamhassi]

But he's asking that we delete public history which is absurd. If the courts wanted it sealed they had that option. Part of his sentence was his conviction be public for all to see forever. I'd have a little more sympathy if this crime happened 30 years ago before the internet, but this is 10 years ago, anyone that committed a crime then should expect they could be on the internet as a criminal.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[mark-t]

Of course, but that shouldn't give him the right to effectively remove any remaining evidence that the event ever happened in the first place.

The fundamental problem with the "right to be forgotten" bullshit is that it is an attempt to legislate what people are allowed to think about by censoring their access to information that will enable them to think about those things. It certainly isn't fair that society might judge a person who has adequately repaid his debt to society, but I would argue that it is far *LESS* fair to try and dictate what other people are allowed to believe or think about somebody else, even if those thoughts happen to be themselves, unfair.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[Major Blud]

The Judge has some pretty unconstitutional (liberal) logic applied here.

Considering that it's a UK court, I'd say it being unconstitutional is spot on, being that it's not covered by the U.S. Constitution.

This is 9th circuit crap.

I don't think this is in the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction.

Re: Do we trust the legal system?

[tomtomtom]

Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, in the UK lesser offences are indeed 'forgotten' in many important respects after a period of time (they become 'spent'). For example, it's illegal for most employers to ask about spent offences, and the offenders have the support of the law in lying about them if they are asked anyway. I don't see that this is particularly out of step with that principle.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[Archangel Michael]

brand someone as a criminal forever has its origins in Jim Crow laws.

This is patently false and borderline racist bullshit. NOT every thing is tied to "Jim Crow". Branding (literally, and figuratively) criminals goes WAY back further than 200 years, and isn't a particularly western phenomena either, as cultures around the world did it.

Read a book or two outside your own worldview, and expand your insight and stop listening to the stupid professors who haven't taught you how to think.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[laie_techie]

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.

Are you saying that criminals are more likely to be Democrats? Perhaps the other way around: Democrats are more likely to be criminals?

Re: Do we trust the legal system?

[mark-t]

I wasnt arguing about what is legal, I was arguing about what is right.

The entire "right to be forgotten" notion is predicated on the idea that one can somehow force people to treat each other more fairly when the powers that be limit the general public's access to information about the past that may predispose those people toward unfair beliefs and notions.

Whether this idea is true or not is irrelevant. In a nutshell, it tries to control what people are allowed to think, and that is what is wrong, even if the thoughts they are trying to limit happen to be unfair.

Re:Do we trust the legal system?

[HornWumpus]

Liberal as defined when the constitution was written, not 'liberal' now.

Liberal used to mean 'in favor of liberty', not for 100 years in America.

Re:How does this get implemented well or effective

[Cederic]

Well, Google are playing too nicely here. They absolutely should return results to a search for this individual's name with "The UK High Court has ruled that we must not provide you with a result to your search query. Click here to execute this search on Bing"

Different justices for different people

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The businessman who won his case was convicted 10 years ago of conspiring to intercept communications. He spent six months in jail.

Poor sumbitch did time for intercepting communications, yet I don't see anybody from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Doubleclick or CloudFlare in the slammer...

"Right to be forgotten"

[argStyopa]

....is an Orwellian "Right to Erase History" cloaked (barely) in a postmodern "protect my feelings" camouflage.

it is one of the most pernicious and evil pieces of government legislation in human history - to assert that people have a RIGHT to employ the forces of law to rewrite what are known facts in favor of (empty set).

Unbelievable. The philosophers of the Enlightenment are spinning in their graves.

Re:"Right to be forgotten"

[b0s0z0ku]

Wrong. Orwell would support this, at least in the US, if not Europe. Read 1984.

Winston Smith was basically an "unperson" after he was tortured, made to denounce Julia, and released. How many "unpeople" do we make in the US, by virtue of arrest records (without conviction)? How many do we make by convicting people of crimes that should be treated medically or ignored (e.g. drug possession), then branding them for life. Short of someone committing murder, gross mayhem, abuse, or repeated large thefts, I'm not for branding people for life.

news paper

[DrYak]

yeah, putting this into practice would mean tracking and burning every single copy of every single newspaper that happened to report on the case, etc.

not gonna happen.
the guy should learn to deal with the fact that his name can be associated with the case forever (just maybe not on google).
but potential future employer/business partners/etc need also to learn that it stupid to count on such old information, the gus havinv served their time and paid your due to society.

Re:Rehabilitation of Offenders Act

[b0s0z0ku]

UK is smart like that -- it recognizes that people need to lead their lives after getting out of jail, and that making someone unemployable means they'll be more likely to commit another crime. The US, OTOH...

Might Be Worth Remembering...

[ytene]

... that in the UK, there is a law on the Statute, the "Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, 1974", which allows for past crimes to be "forgotten" when the convicted criminal has both served time adjudged and shown - through a period of time in which no relapses have taken place - that they have put their criminal past behind them.

Although I don't know the specifics of the case in question, the argument offered by the former convict seems quite compelling: they have served their time, paid their debt to society, and even have a law of the land there to back them up... only to have this undermined by a web search engine.

This doesn't in any way suggest that Google or Bing or Duck Duck Go would be deliberately flouting such laws, merely that the internet has a long memory.

However, there are some interesting aspects to this. For example, Google is just an indexing system; it's possible that a search will merely find references to old newspaper articles covering the story of a conviction and sentencing for a crime long past. This takes us back on to the circular treadmill of the argument used when discussing things like bittorrent and P2P file sharing sites - is a search engine breaking the law for pointing at pirated content? Is a search engine breaking the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act for pointing to articles covering long-paid-for crimes?

One of the most difficult adjustments that we're having to make as an "internet society" is the fact that the internet never forgets. As aspects of the digital realm form such embedded parts of our lives, the way that the internet functions [with things like data retention] is going to become only more important, only more sensitive.

In this particular case I wonder if the plaintiff - the former criminal - was interested merely in removing the conviction from search engines, or in reminding content publishers of their obligations under the same law? It's obvious why the plaintiff would target Google - the engine acts like a gateway and aggregator to the content, but Google will only spider and index what is already there. What about the ultimate publishers?

No easy answers here...

The First Amendment, again

[mi]

(Yes, I know, this case was in London, where there is no Constitution, much less the Bill of Rights. That's irrelevant to my point.)

If, as we've held for decades, the First Amendment protects the right to publish even state secrets — however illegal their divulging by the original sources may have been — it certainly covers the right to publish everything and anything else one knows and has not promised not to divulge.