Google's 'right to be forgotten': One rule for celebs, another for plebs Celebrity names won't trigger a Google right to be forgotten disclaimer notice, but yours will. A Google of most of our names will throw up this disclaimer – which makes us appear rather shady – but Stephen Fry needn't worry Google is covering its back following the so-called right to be forgotten ruling in the European …
No Trevor, in our case I think infamous is the operative descriptor. In my case, my CompuServe days.
[For the record, I have a bunch of followers on the various social media sites and I've not a clue why. It's not like I post anything. Which speaks volumes about the value of followers. Whatever.]
"In a letter to Europe’s committee of data protection authorities the search giant revealed that any [sic] search query involving a name will trigger the “some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe” notification - whether requests to take down results have been received or not."
Demonstrably not true, as big_D and I have just discovered.
Exactly! Define being famous. Several hundred people follow me and my photographic exploits, tiny in comparison to some z-list pop starlet but am I famous 'cos a few hundred people follow my work? I'm well known and respected within some small groups of people but outside that no bugger will have heard of me! Do I get special dispensation from Google?
If the "disclaimer" is meaningless, then why bother posting it at all?
The "disclaimer" isn't about alerting searchers that the results they see might be different if they try google.com instead of google.cc-tld, it's about getting the political message out there that google objects to ordinary plebs having a right to control the picture that google paints of them.
The whole malarkey about "delinking" articles is just more FUD - web pages aren't being unlinked or managed in any way by google - the only thing that is being changed is the index for a particular search term - not a web page, something that google does all the time whenever it tweaks it's algorithms, and it damn well doesn't do anything to alert webmasters that their web pages will be affected when that happens!
Its really not going to work
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/486549/Google-Article-on-George-Osborne-brother-s-conversion-to-Islam-removed
Now I don't subscribe the to Express' point of view on many things, but I agree with them that removing stuff is pointless, I mean, before now I wasn't even aware that George Osborne had a brother.
#StreisandEffect
Personally, I think google should have just forwarded all such requests to the relevant countries data protection authority, and let them make the decisions.
That way, little effort for google, no controversy about the things that are removed, and the people who are responsible for this kind of decision have to do all the work.
I also reckon, if they went this route, 99% of the requests would be rejected on the grounds that you have no right to remove entirely factual information about yourself.
Exactly, just like newspapers go ahead and print anything they like, and only print a retraction after they get a court order, or RyanAir demands that disabled people get a court order to enforce their right to assistance every time the need to fly somewhere, or all the other rights that people have to get court orders to uphold.
But that's the last thing Google wants.
Their goal is to whip up public sentiment against the European law and get it repealed. Everything they do, every announcement they make, every change to their home page, has the sole aim of "making the law unpopular".
To that end: the more links they delete, and the more fuss they can make about it, the better they like it.
If they offloaded the job to a public body of some sort - the public body would be inundated and requests would take months to be filtered, and - worst of all, from Google's point of view - the links that eventually get removed would be determined by some kind of publicly available criteria. And we all know how Google feels about transparency.
"Beyond that, abstract consideration, however, our economic interest does not have a practical or direct impact.”"
This request came from a hotmail address. Reject.
This request came from a lawyer... might cost us money. Approved
This request came from a lawyer for a guy we don't like. Approved, make sure the press find out.
This request came from some ass that thinks their important. Approved, massively overblock.
For every removal request Google should post a notice and give the public 48 hours to comment (or check out what the person is trying to hide).
But then the requester will have to request to have the notice of their request taken down.
Which will go out for the public to comment on
..............
sorry to be a downer, but...
There was a time when all the search engines tried to be the best they possibly could. Ok that wasn't Altavista but then came google and we breathed a collective sigh of relief....
" Ahhhh, something finally works!"
But now the rich and powerful have had their way, and it is no longer a "window on the internet, the most amazing human creation for equality"
It is now "a spot light on only censored material those in power want you to see...or sell you stuff"
Too negative?
P.
@ Tim 13 has it right--this is not going to work
Someone observed in related story that we need to think through the potential for unintended consequences before we start mucking about changing laws and establishing legal precedents.
The result of not doing so is that companies like Google, when faced with possible legal/regulatory action, are compelled by their legal counsel to do SOMETHING.
The laws and regulations are arguably crafted by individuals who are imminently unqualified in any substantive aspect of the matters involved. The legal effect of the laws are likely to be indecipherable. Attempts by the lawyers to interpret them are likely to generate nonsense.
Amidst all the questionable answers, one thing stands out as certain, Whenever those who govern and the special interests they serve talk about privacy, it is never about mine.
I did a lot of embarrassing/questionable things on the late 90's/early 2000's Internet under a pseudonym (as was the style at the time.) Fortunately most of it has fallen out of Google's scope due to its age, but if you dig carefully enough you can connect the pseudonym with my actual identity.
Could I get the pseudonym's information removed from search results? I fear for a "Streisand effect" so mostly I'm just hoping Google will forget about all of it through attrition.
> If Google does remove a link to misleading data, the action will only be performed for searches via its European country-specific top level domains - google.be, google.de, google.fr, etc.
That may play well into the narrative Google want people to believe, but that is a solution for when a country doesn't want to see certain content (ie. censorship). The problem they actually need to solve is to remove other peoples' property from their systems when requested to do so.
As best I understand it, this whole thing was propagated from two decisions:
1) "Data subjects" (that's you and me) are the owners of data regarding themselves.
2) Google's search index/results for a person is considered to be data regarding that person.
This means that, under European data-protection laws, Google is a "data controller", and has the responsibility to delete such data at the subject's request, if it is no longer relevant.
Note: delete. Not "hide from the data subject", nor "hide from a particular region", nor even "hide from everyone". They are required to delete that data.
Or they could always pull all of their business out of the European markets. Like the Irish market, and the Dutch market, and the Irish market again.
"2) Google's search index/results for a person is considered to be data regarding that person."
...and that's the mistake, right there. Once you start shooting messengers, messengers learn that the only safe option is just to stop delivering the news. Today's story is that Google now check your location before deciding what to say. It is only a matter of time before they start choosing whether to say anything at all. After all, their core business is a bunch of datacenters in the US. If they were to stop doing business in the EU (ie, start forcing advertisers to do business in the US, in dollars), they'd be pretty much untouchable in a European court. And even if they stopped serving search results to RIPE addresses, the European multinationals would still do business with them.
> Once you start shooting messengers, messengers learn that the only safe option is just to stop delivering the news.
That's the thing though; Google aren't just a simple messenger. They already pick and choose what messages to deliver to which people, every time anyone enters any search term - that's the entire point of having a search algorithm.
I've said it before: The point of this order is that Google remove information which is no longer relevant. Google should be happy to now have another source of relevance data which they can apply to their search algorithm. If the information was indeed irrelevant (and by Google's removal rate, they seems to agree in many cases), then that means their search results are now even more useful!
> If they were to stop doing business in the EU (ie, start forcing advertisers to do business in the US, in dollars), they'd be pretty much untouchable in a European court.
Indeed, but as I hinted at, they'd have to forgo the "tax efficiency" provided by certain EU nations. They don't funnel all their profits through their Irish headquarters for the craic, you know.
I think the problem here is a fundamental incompatibility between the law and where Internet technology is in 2014.
I can appreciate what the court's attempting to do and I think their motives are very noble, however in practical terms it's effectively impossible to achieve and it's opened a whole can of worms over who decides what gets deleted.
It's almost like they think Google's operating some kind of simple directory service rather than an incredibly complex search engine that contains billions of listings and that is maintained and developed largely by software, not people making decisions on every entry.
It's a well-intentioned but completely ridiculous ruling that is going to end up causing more problems than it's trying to fix.
I noticed that. This is why I originally came to the mistaken conclusion that they were only showing the message when something had actually been removed. I googled one of the names from the lawsuits, got the message. Then I googled a some famous name (I forget who now), no message. I also tried "john doe", also no message.
While trying to figure out how they award celeb status I just noticed something else odd. If you put the name in quotes the message always shows up, even if it's "johnny depp" or "barack obama".
Fine, since I don't have the Interweb telling me anymore, I'll just make the assumption that all slebs are drug and sex crazed hippies. And anyone who plays "football". And any polititian (hey, they've been known to partake in a bit of this and a bit of that...).
What the hay, I'll just assume that *everyone* is a drug and sex crazed hippie and be done with it.
The notion that people can 'own' publicly available information about themselves makes straight bananas look quite sensible. I feel I am living in a heightened Monty Python sketch about commonsense lying flat on its back with its feet in the air.
The only real thing in this tidal wave of emotive, factless twaddle about 'out-of-date, irrelevant, unimportant, not-in-the-public-interest' and other supremely indefinable types of information, is the certainty that the final say on what EU peasants will be permitted to know lies with the EU's politicised 'Supreme Court'. Anyone who is not concerned by that should wipe the stardust from their eyes and grow some brain cells.
Google is right to make a mockery of this dangerous nonsense. Not only does it hand a powerful censorship tool to the EU, but it also degrades the extraordinary, free service that search engines provide for ordinary people, even those consumed with such hatred over them making money that they have lost sight of what life was like without one.
A few years ago I managed to purchase MoD surplus with unencrypted classified data on it. Suppose I buy surplus NHS hard disks with your private patient records on it? Then I publish those records on the internet through a site not in the UK. The records have your full name, address, DoB and NI number. Not only that, it has your full medical history with the private notes from your Doctor which you may or may not have seen. Knowing the NHS, it could mean that there are mistakes in your records or parts of other people notes are attached to yours.
Are you telling me that if there were a diagnosis for AIDS or psychotic behaviour that were not yours or you personally had some debilitating ailment or mental disorders, that you would be willing to just leave it on the internet? Supposing my website linked to that information from my UK website? Suppose your current employer were to read your records and terminate your employment, I think you would be humming a very different tune.
Google is making a mockery because that is the ONLY thing they can do. Like a child throwing a tantrum for sweets. They know that the EU have the power and ability to lay heavy fines and even cut access to Google, kind of like the American Internet kill switch. Google do not want to run the risk of loosing business in the EU. What would be the result if overnight Google were not accessible because of a European Court ruling and then the EU stated that the new Search Engine of choice for 480 million Europeans was Bing?
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