Google wins privacy case: ‘Right to be forgotten’ applies only in EU
latimes.com
latimes.com
The question then is, how does this apply to search engines/indexers? I don't think it necessarily should, however since 'indexers' are not a recognized role in data processing laws, it takes some case law to figure these things out properly.
By the letter of the law, if something about me is indexed by google, they are processing my personal data and I have the right to ask them to stop doing that and delete it. Realistically though, this can lead to abuse by public people same as the DCMA does for companies.
So, still some work to be done. But I am glad that I have a legal way to force for instance a marketing deparment to stop harassing me with spam mail/calls. In practice, the threat of making a official request is often enough to motivate them ;)
- the data they need to "forget" - the request for forgetting the data
google is just an index over sites, if they do NOT want to remove things, google will index it forever.
thus thats why I hate the "right to be forgotten" law. it uses the wrong approach. it targets google, which does not provide the data. unfortunatly most often people want to silence news outlets which do not NEED to remove the data. so its extremly complicated.
I dislike both and I think the law should remove data from the web if it targets people and is relatively old (discussable). This would eliminate the problem completly AND all search engines would need to stop it. Or better implement a banned.txt or something that news outlets/sites need to implement if they are targeted, so that even archives can remove the data. all in all the law is pretty stupid in its current state. because it does not fix the problem it just duck tapes it.
Getting it THEN deleted from google/bing/and friends is freaking annoying. They act like they're some superimportant holders of knowledge, and require all kind of identification, personal information, ID document copies, whatever, just to even listen to you.
There's outdated link removal console for both search engines, but it only works if websites are implemented certain way, to properly return 404 error on no longer existing pages. Some websites will redirect non-existing urls to home page, and good luck getting anything removed from search engines then. They will refuse, because the page still exists. They will not even check that the page has changed.
Google's real issue isn't that they have some deep ideological conviction to free speech. This isn't 1998-2008 Google anymore, all the "free speech" libertarians have either left the company or retired rich.
Their real issue is that a zero marginal cost business, like a search engine, is starting to have some costs now. Their opposition to these types of laws is about preserving their high margin, infinitely scalable business model. That may have been the primary motivator in the early years of Google as well, the ideology may have just been grafted on later.
But that requires having people process your request and having un-structured request medium, like accepting e-mails on some preferred address.
And it looks like google liks to avoid having an unstructured input from random plebes, presumably to avoid expensive human labor.
If I post a photo to facebook with "public" settings, then later want to delete it, facebook should do so. If an indexer like google has indexed it, then they should delete it too. Profile photos are an instance.
If I am the subject of a public interest news story, then I don't think I can ask them to forget me, so maybe in that case I can't ask google to forget me either?
I could then ask google to forget something if and only if I could ask the underlying content publisher to forget it.
There is at least one significant deviation from your "transitive" reasoning, though, in that while EU law might not extend to an original source that is providing misleading/harmful data about someone but is based elsewhere, it can still affect those providing indirect access to that data who are within the scope of EU law.
Suppose that once the dust settles, the facts turn out to be entirely in your favor, and a the publications that ran hit pieces against you quietly issue retractions.
What will happen when I search Google for '6gvONxR4sf7o'? Maybe because you are interviewing to work for me?
I'm going to be bombarded with three pages of search results that loudly proclaim you to be a criminal, a moral degenerate, and possibly even a horse thief.
Is it in the public interest for incorrect information about you to be an incredibly prominent part of your public record?
(Bonus points: You can run a lucrative business by poisoning someone's search results, by, say, including their name and alleged wrong-doings in a 'mugshot database', and then demanding that the target pay you money to get removed from this 'mugshot database'... Should search engines be allowed to play their part in this form of extortion?)
Also, 'mugshot indexes' that extort money from you are a big business. Search engines should not be cooperating with, and profiting off that racket.
I'm not sure I agree with that. It's certainly valid for them to retain a snapshot of that time with the profile photo available. Or are you suggesting they are expected to alter/modify snapshots (or log data) to cater to after-the-fact decisions?
At best, it might be reasonable to pursue a right to demand amendment.
It's new? I think it's always been like that since the dawn of the internet (and before if you substitute "online" for "published"). The idea that you should have a right to force other entities to forget public information that they saw is what seems to be new.
> You accidentally have the wrong sharing settings, which you notice too late. Should there be no ability to change your mind?
Well, it's like accidentally telling someone a secret and then wishing there was legislature to force them to forget what you told them (assuming we have a technology for human memory deletion).
The bigger issue I think is that Google is already enjoying such position of deciding who and what is visible in the indexes. This is about giving similar option to the person whose data is indexed.
Why?
Essentially, it's like your privacy rights were violated in a novel, so instead of going after the publisher to cease and desist, you sue every single library (and technically every non-organizational owner of said novel) to burn their copy.
In addition to that, the responsibility to decide what should be taken down/delisted is also moved from the publisher/courts of law to the indexer, so there is no due process.
Not letting others know things that are true that reflect poorly on you is though is a different story.
Take for instance the since-freed murderers who have used the law to hide their past actions. I don’t think that is something you should have the right to ask the world to forget.
Basically, I have no problem with only law-enforcement having a record of the past mistakes of reformed people, assuming that 1) law enforcement is actually "serving and protecting" and 2) the justice systems ensures a high fraction of cons are actually reformed.
This is a fundamental philosophical difference between the US and much of Europe. I'm not sure precisely from where it arises (though I suspect it stems from a combination of the US government tracing its historical roots to Enlightenment-era thinking on personal liberty and the English government having a law against sedition; the American colonies organizing a rebellion in spite of that law).
If they should be in prison then the countries don't differ.
If they shouldn't be in prison then they probably won't make a worse babysitter. It was a very extreme circumstance that they regret.
There's nothing that makes murder specifically relevant to babysitting. If the implication is they wouldn't be hired, that implication applies to every job. So they'd be unhireable. Which in practice is more or less the same as "they should still be in prison".
Should this person not be allowed to work with children?
> If the implication is they wouldn't be hired, that implication applies to every job.
Unhirable for one, high trust job doesn't mean unhirable for every job. For example, I don't care if a sex offender washes my dishes at a restaurant, but I wouldn't want them teaching my preschoolers.
For a sex offender, it depends on what kind. For example, a former prostitute is no less qualified than anyone else. But sure, some kinds are relevant, and should disqualify people from a narrow slice of jobs.
The problem is when people have supposedly served their time but can't get 95% of jobs.
Prison does not rehabilitate the vast majority of criminals. That's not it's purpose.
Also murder has a super low recidivism rate.
Ah, the old "I'm not a Christian and think it's stupid and backwards, so this argument won't work on me, but maybe this argument will work on you and you'll do what I want" approach.
Good luck with that.
Should we really only enact laws when they can be enforced worldwide?
There's the trivial solution of hosting it on a server outside of the EU but I doubt it's legal if the entity is still in the EU.
There's the legal solution of moving outside of the EU and assuming another nationality but for most persons that's not trivial.
The Right to be Forgotten, if applied to books would be Orwellian but somehow it's ok when the information is digitally aggregated/distributed?
It would be a lot easier if newspapers could stop printing names of people who are not public figures. In some countries newspapers already don't do that. No doubt it's highly titillating for people to read about how AB was brutally raped and how XY has been arrested as a suspect (XY being released without charge the next day may or may not be considered newsworthy), but surely the story would be just as titillating without the names? Then we wouldn't have to argue about how to stop Google from indexing those names.
But even then, it wouldn't be ridiculous to suggest that if they're selling background check services then they have to abide by some restrictions.
Are recordings from all the cameras in the EU policed for the right to be forgotten? No. Probably because there's no aggregator similar to Google for them.
If your camera caught someone doing something illegal, turn it over to the police and let them handle it. If you publish the footage, you're likely to get prosecuted and fined. You don't have to agree because it's a cultural thing. Where I live privacy actually matters.
Should people be able to find out about that if the information was available digitally? I think so.
I don't see how it's different from: if it's in a book somewhere I have the right to find and read it.
Surely, the amount of effort required to know the facts does not qualify my right to know the facts?
But you don't have that.
Even if it's published, copyright can interfere. If it's not published, you very much don't have that right.
There is no general-purpose right to know things about people.
It's by default fine if you find someone that wants to tell you something. But that doesn't itself make it okay to collate a database of information about millions of people.
applies only in EU*
* Also applies in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.
To implement a right to be forgotten, I assume one must keep a list of things that must be forgotten by indexers.
Doesn't the existence of that list defeat the purpose of the right to be forgotten if it's leaked? It'd be the ultimate Streisand Effect directory.
It seems reasonable to have some kind of "export" controls, like if you want to index our country's data, you have to abide by our content laws regarding it. Meanwhile, we'll let you do whatever with data you index from elsewhere. You can't show Canadians the forgotten French story, but you can still show them the Canadian paper's version of it. And if you don't abide by that, we won't let google canada export this data from france in the first place.
This is somewhat controversial, because arguably it is impossible to meet that standard if you export to somewhere like the US, where there are laws allowing the national government to obtain personal data from those within its own reach, which no contractual safeguards or similar provisions can override. EU nations have similar rules, but only recognise their own national security interests as a valid reason to override the normal protections, not the analogous interests of any third country (that is, country that isn't an EU member state). The UK now has similar concerns in connection with Brexit.
How about an archive (outside the EU) of every Right To Be Forgotten request, and links to what was not to be remembered.
The people of the EU can be the most forgetful people on the planet. But everyone else can remember.
However, it is impolite to point and laugh. So don't. Keep it to a low snicker.
My understanding is the Right to Be Forgotten predates GDPR by a fairly long period.
For example, in Germany, people have a right to anonymity, that forbids newspapers to identify persons (print full names, photos, addresses) unless making them public would be in the public interest. While this isn't perfect and of course open to interpretation, it seems to me that having privacy protections (and due process where they fail) is much better lawmaking than trying the fix things down the road when the privacy is already breached. Especially if the fixes are this ham-fisted.
> The Lumen database collects and analyzes legal complaints and requests for removal of online materials, helping Internet users to know their rights and understand the law. These data enable us to study the prevalence of legal threats and let Internet users see the source of content removals.
You can search it for references to the right to be forgotten[1], although the results will not contain full URLs of the removal requests.
[0]: https://www.lumendatabase.org/
[1]: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&...
Google AMP will cache (store?) outside of the EU all pages using that service, and the Internet Archive might store pages before any deletion request, but they're not subject to EU laws. What a mess....
edit: I welcome any move directed at protecting people privacy, but this seems clearly made by people who don't have a clue about the involved technical problems and would attempt to solve every issue by ordering to block traffic to or from some places (when the only tool you know is a hammer...).
A stupid example? just put a "like" on Medium next to an article regarding something that embarrasses you and few days later that article will appear on Google when looking for your name, and then you would love to have the GDPR at your disposal to permanently delete your Medium account.
- phone numbers are not personal, embarrassing stories
- a phone book is a primary source, but a search engine is not
Right, which makes the right to be forgotten even more important than the right to be removed from a phone book.
When you're disputing an analogy, the discrepancies have to actually be relevant and support your point. You can just say "you can't compare A and B because A is not B."
I'm sure you've seen news articles from 100 years ago describing relevant aspects about history, with lessons and describing how we became the society that we are. "Right to be forgotten" wants history to be ephemeral.
You have no right (in the EU) to write about true facts from your life, for future generations, if anybody finds that truth embarrassing.
I think that's scary as fuck, and a greater danger to freedom and democracy than Trump, Johnson, Kim, and Putin combined.
Because that's a very real thing that happens to a large number of people who have made enemies through ex-lovers, jilted coworkers, and just garden variety online trolls that maybe didn't take kindly to a random post you made online somewhere.
As with many things, it is all a double edged sword. Medical confidentiality? Great! Until the patient is a commercial pilot, the doctor his psych that tells him he should not be flying and the pilot decides to not tell his boss and fly his plane with everyone aboard into a mountain... (Happened a few years back)
We have to balance risks & rewards with these kinds of laws.
Your solution is "give everyone unlimited access", but that's not a balancing, that's an extreme position.
And you need a lot of medical confidentiality or you make people afraid to go to psychologists at all, and everyone is worse off.
But unlike the downvoters (including you?) I'm not willing to throw freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, and the right to know the past all out the window for this.
This is book-burning on a massive scale. When you retire and write your memoirs you will not be allowed to put in true facts that you can prove.
If the right to be forgotten is indeed a right, then that story you wrote about "you show me yours I'll show you mine" justifies busting in to the home of everyone who bought your book in order to put in on the bonfire. It's as if your life is under a national security gag order, and you'll never be allowed to tell what you did not just in the CIA, but anywhere with anyone.
> Because that's a very real thing that happens to a large number of people who have made enemies through ex-lovers, jilted coworkers, and just garden variety online trolls that maybe didn't take kindly to a random post you made online somewhere.
There are already laws against the actions I think you're implying here.
Maybe it makes sense that if the Canadian company is serving content to France they have to abide by the French rules, but I don't see any kind of case for blanket removal. Neither does the EU for that matter. Take note that the ruling says basically Google had to make it hard for a French person to access the Canadian version of their engine.
On the other end, a French person can demand that a Canadian company prevent French people from finding information about them (some exceptions might apply though). The Canadian company can also choose not to do business with the EU, in which case it doesn't have to abide by EU rules (some sites decided to do exactly that when GDPR rolled out).
If legislation like these ones could encompass the whole world, certain powerful countries, corporations, individuals, etc would use it to ensure that only what was beneficial to them would be indexed, searchable and available.
That's not how this works. You ask the entity in question to remove your data.
You only ask your "government" to enforce that right if everything else fails. You're already assuming bad faith from the entity. Some requests are actually reasonable and when you talk to a human they will do it if you have a good reason.
I happen to be one of them. And I also think that freedom of speech must be protected.
Where I am from, there are many websites that display your personal information (social security number, address, phone numbers etc) since the state gives it away for free and there is no way to block this. The fault is really not Googles, but at least this tool lets people get some peace since most of the people where I am from only use Google and when you are removed you are basically invisible.
This is highly annoying, especially when you have been subject to criminals, but I get it. It is hard to block something else than a url.
HN has become so one-sided. I don't even know if I agree with the right to be forgotten but it certainly has had a positive effect for me and probably many others.
But here is an search on just such a site: https://www.merinfo.se/search?who=Kjell&where=
Kjell is a common Swedish name, just click on any link and you will see the personal information about this person. Usually, there also pictures outside their homes with Google Street view.
There are many of these sites, and the information comes from the government. The sites have a right to publish this information and there is nothing you can do in order for it to stop as an individual.
The only real solution if you want to be a bit more anonymous is to write yourself on an adress which you don't live on. But that requires you to have such an adress to begin with and will mess with a lot of systems.