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Google EU Privacy The Courts The Internet

Google Wins Round in Fight Against Global Right To Be Forgotten (bloomberg.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the bigger-picture dept.
Google shouldn't have to apply the so-called right to be forgotten globally, an adviser to the EU's top court said in a boost for the U.S. giant's fight with a French privacy regulator over where to draw the line between privacy and freedom of speech. From a report: While backing Google's stance, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the EU Court of Justice said that search engine operators must take every measure available to remove access to links to outdated or irrelevant information about a person on request. The Luxembourg-based court follows such advice in a majority of its final rulings, which normally come a few months after the opinions.

Google has been fighting efforts led by France's privacy watchdog to globalize the right to be forgotten, which was created by the EU court in a landmark ruling in 2014, without defining how, when and where search engine operators should remove links. This has triggered a wave of legal challenges. The Alphabet unit currently removes such links EU-wide and since 2016 it also restricts access to such information on non-EU Google sites when accessed from the EU country where the person concerned by the information is located -- referred to as geo-blocking. This approach was backed by Szpunar.
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Google Wins Round in Fight Against Global Right To Be Forgotten More

Google Wins Round in Fight Against Global Right To Be Forgotten

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  • The Right to Rewrite History (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday January 10, 2019 @12:08PM (#57937716) Homepage Journal

    Only the wealthy can afford to employ the right to be forgotten, because it's a game of whack-a-mole. Consequently people with money will wind up looking "cleaner" than everyone else, and we won't move society forward by taking an honest look at our actual behavior and adjusting our perceptions of norms accordingly.

    • Re:The Right to Rewrite History (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Thursday January 10, 2019 @12:15PM (#57937748)

      Oh I support the idea we should take an honest look at ourselves and adjust our behavior but I don't agree that we should be looking at each others behavior. Society is also ruthless and unforgiving, it will always be true that many things are indefensible to those who weren't there. The only saving grace is that society has a short memory. Technology is transforming a thankfully short memory into an eternal one.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        On the other hand, some offences should never be forgotten.

        Child molesters should never again be allowed to work in positions where they have authority over children.

        Corrupt bribe-taking traitors should never again be allowed to work in positions of governmental authority.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          Those things are matters of criminal record and have nothing to do with tech companies stealing data that rightfully belongs to users and monetizing it.

          • Those things are matters of criminal record

            The EU "right to be forgotten" includes criminal records, and other public records. The UK's RTBF also includes criminal convictions.

            Right to be forgotten [wikipedia.org]

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              I do not see any blanket rules of that sort on the page just some offenses. But as a father and protective parent, I still have to acknowledge giving up the sex offender registry to get rid of the massive recidivism caused by effectively making offenders unemployable in any sort of real job after they get out is probably a fair trade off. You do the time, you are no longer guilty of the crime.

              • Re:The Right to Rewrite History (Score:5, Insightful)

                by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday January 10, 2019 @03:41PM (#57939340)

                One solution to the sex offender registry is MORE information, rather than less. One guy may be on the list for raping a four year old. Another guy may be on it for urinating in a public park. Perhaps we should distinguish between these.

                A man in my neighborhood is on the list for having sex with his wife. At the time he was 18 and she was 15. Her parents disapproved of the relationship, and called the police. He accepted a plea bargain without understanding the consequences. They got married when she turned 18. Their son and my son are best friends. He must stay 300 yards from any school, can't go to PTA meetings, and has never met his son's teachers. Branding this guy for life is idiotic, since he is no danger to anyone, but that doesn't mean that the registry should be abolished for real predators.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Shaitan ( 22585 )

                  "One solution to the sex offender registry is MORE information"

                  Look, if we don't want these people to be able to live then we should change the punishment to be one that that handles them permanently in some way. But what we should not do is set a lighter punishment because we don't want the hassle and expense and then create lists and witch hunts to haunt people who have already taken their punishment and are trying to move on with their lives.

                  "Perhaps we should distinguish between these."

                  Or we could go ba

                  • Or we could go back to the original logic of having been punished erasing the crime and people having a second chance.

                    We tried that. The problem is that if a bank robber robs another bank, the bank is out a bit of money. If a child rapist rapes another child, another life is destroyed.

                    The problem is equating child rape with public urination. That is what our current system does.

                    • "We tried that."

                      What do you mean. I've tried a lot of things. Some worked 100%, some less, some none.

                      Should we still be 'trying' it ?

                  • "Perhaps we should distinguish between these."

                    Or we could go back to the original logic of having been punished erasing the crime and people having a second chance.

                    Second chance? Yes. Absolutely. Erasing the crime? That doesn't happen. Actions have consequences, and this is not a video game, and you cannot reload from a save point. There's no going back. Punished? That's the fundamental problem with this whole scenario. We're still stuck on punishment, and how that's supposed to be some kind of solution. But people don't grow up to hurt people because they had their emotional needs fulfilled during development. Maybe punishment has its place, but it should not be the

                • I thought there were "Romeo and Juliet" exceptions for these types of relationships.

            • As opposed to a 'Right to be Honest', where any of various services would continue to provide factual, accurate information about individuals that such individuals would rather they did not?

              Wow. This still somewhat amazes me, people would want really unflattering, or derogatory, or prejudicial info about themselves suppressed, but the early examples seemed, IIRC, to be public figures wanting to 'delete' reporting on convictions, as one example.

              Sure. I just say 'no'. But it's the EU, and be sure this is to s

      • Technology is transforming a thankfully short memory into an eternal one.

        There are many things I'm ashamed of I did while growing up (and even afterwards!) It gets even worse when you have a evolving set of (moral?) standards.

        Honestly, how does it go: Let them who is without sin cast the first stone. But if I'm anonymous and can convince others to gang on, then there's No Problem (for me!) Sucks to be you.

        I toss a funny/annoying pebble and log off. If it starts an avalanche it's not MY fault. You must have deserved it or it wouldn't have happened. Twilight Zone [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Not at all. You just tell Google your name and the information that is not relevant any more, and they remove all results containing it from searches of your name, forever. You don't have to submit individual URLs or re-submit periodically, they do it automatically.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Wealthy can afford many things. :/

  • Right to Be Forgotten? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I never quite understood inventing rights like this. How far does it extend? If I write something in my diary about something stupid a classmate did when he was a kid, can the classmate demand I erase it?

    What about if I tell the story to my wife?

    What if I write about the story in a letter to another friend?

    If I write a blog post about it that my ten followers see?

    If I write a memoir about it in my autobiography?

    Where do you draw the line? And how do you enforce this without taking away my right to truthfull

  • One company should not have this kind of power. The robber barons of the 19th Century only dreamed of this kind of power.

    Google must be broken up. Not into two pieces but into a thousand.

    • Fragmenting search makes no sense.

      But forcing Google to either firewall or divest of things such as Maps, GMail, Drive, Docs, etc, makes some sense. Let them act as independent lines of business, to enforce privacy features, and basically stop doing evil across the enterprise.

      Make each service/feature/app do their own evil. We can deal with the lizards easier than the dragon.

  • One of the dumbest laws (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jwymanm ( 627857 ) on Thursday January 10, 2019 @12:35PM (#57937920) Homepage
    Do you have the right to be forgotten in books? In movies? In news stories? In schools? In songs? Since the history of man.. What the hell is EU thinking. This shouldn't even be a thing.
    • +1 Like the first post said : The Right to Rewrite History. Nice Orwellian future.

    • Re:One of the dumbest laws (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SysPig ( 63656 ) on Thursday January 10, 2019 @01:37PM (#57938422)

      We do not live in a binary world. Shades of grey exist everywhere, and this is no exception. The debate should be over where to draw the line, and who gets to draw it - not whether it should exist at all.

      Let's take the examples you provide. Which of them allows millions of devices, operated by billions of people or with complete autonomy, to access everything associated with your name in seconds? Even this information is not equal to your examples. The source of much of it is near impossible to determine, the accuracy far more suspect and in many cases it's impossible to change that which is in error.

      You know what else has existed in nearly the entire history of man? Privacy by obscurity. The fact that information could have been accessed doesn't mean it was. There was never a need to codify such things, as the level of current intrusion couldn't possibly have been predicted by anyone until relatively recent times - after which, it was too late.

      • Exactly. Many courts in the US, realizing that making public records accessible, via the Internet, made them ACTUALLY accessible. And letting these 'public' records be 'public' when you had to trudge down to the courthouse and pay for them kept access to a minimum.

        Now, with the Internet,. and electronic documents, plenty of courts (and other governmental entities) have decided to erect similar barriers to easy access. They really didn't want these records to be so available.

        If you known anyone involved in l

      • The debate should be over where to draw the line, and who gets to draw it - not whether it should exist at all.

        Great, then let's not put the cart before the horse. Settle the first issue before imposing the second. And really, the question whether it should exist at all is perfectly valid. Cui bono?

      • Privacy is a very modern concept. When most people lived in small towns privacy was non-existent. This was one reason people could do business based on a person's word. If someone gave their word then reneged you knew they were not trustworthy. That was shared far and wide and no one would do business with them.

        It wasn't until more modern times that you needed an iron clad contract to make someone keep their word under governmental force. This became necessary because some amount of "privacy by obscurity" c

    • Well, Jwymanm,
      as you ask. I google for you and find a 35 year old hit that you as a 10 year old stole a candy.
      In the EU you have the right, that this is forgotten.

      I tried to google for a movie where your name is mentioned and includes a crime, I failed. You have any hints? ....

    • Watch out for Orwellian language.

      A right is something that requires inaction on others' parts. Don't suppress your speech, don't beat you up for your religion, etc.

      A privilege is something that requires action on others' parts. Give you welfare, help you get into college, etc.

      Here we have "the right to be forgotten" which requires search engines to take positive, perhaps even Herculean steps. That's clearly a privilege and when you have people calling privileges rights, you can bet that they're up to no

    • Fun business model that exists: some companies scrap mugshots and arrest records from public databases. Doesn't matter if the charges are later dropped or you're found innocent. Or if they make a mistake they'll link someone else to your name (and say "mug shot not available"") They use SEO to make sure that those are the first responses when people Google your name. For a mere few hundred dollars, they'll remove your data from their system.

      I don't know if you think such a model should exist, but I don

    • Frankly, I keep repeating myself but here we go: until recentely, facts were not easily researchable. And so fact could be forgotten. Because to find out those facts you had to spend QUITE a bit of research. e.g. if you had a bankruptcy, and search for a job, the guy there hiring you could not find with a few keystroke you HAD that bankruptcy. If he wanted research you he had to hire somebody and pay hard cash to have that research done. Essentially baring important financial job or secret service nigh nobo

      • Let me repeat myself. Such barriers to information have only existed for a few hundred years at most. Before that most people lived in the same place and everyone new everything about everyone. True, it was possible to move to try to get away from that knowledge, but in most cases knowing who you could trust and who you couldn't was and is a valuable thing.

        Further, in most cases when someone needed to deal with someone they didn't know, they required a letter of introduction, references, which could be chec

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Well I guess this means it's going to be possible to get the "forgotten" info using a VPN with a server located outside of EU and other asshole countries (my own included) that require the enforcement of this bullshit "right".

      The problem with "The Right to be Forgotten" is that short of walling off portions of the Internet, it won't work.

      As well, it's a short hop skip and a jump to come up with all manner of rationales that certain information on the network is not to be allowed.

      Seeing where the EU is heading, I would suggest that the EU use it's superior knowledge and moral imperative, and implement that wall. They can produce a 21st century internet version of the Volksempfänger and be blissful that any and all in

  • When information is shared on the Internet it's too late, you'll never be able to completely remove it. Imagine trying to tell the public to disregard say the election of a politician or something "important" that happened in history. And google is just a search engine. It's like being upset at someone and trying to force your local phone company to de-list them from the white pages. Google despite their vast size is NOT the Internet. It's one of the most powerful search engines and tools you can use

  • Legislation with unintended side effects (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday January 10, 2019 @12:44PM (#57937990) Homepage

    The "right to be forgotten" is typical of legislation where no one thought about the side effects.

    First, it only applies to particular search engines. There is no general applicability. In particular, the source information remains online - it just can't be found through Google or Bing.

    Second, in attempting to have this right applied globally, EU courts are setting an excellent precedent to have other countries determine what content EU citizens can see. After all, if censorship flows in one direction, it will flow in the other. Does the EU really want Saudia Arabia determining what web content is allowable in the EU?

    The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

    • The "right to be forgotten" is typical of legislation where no one thought about the side effects.

      Boy howdy this! We have right to be forgotten, we have the EU mandated Articles 11 and 13. The EU is working it's way toward total control of the internet. Anyone want to bet they won't be screaming about a list of books that they want to be erased from the internet soon?

      After all, if censorship flows in one direction, it will flow in the other. Does the EU really want Saudia Arabia determining what web content is allowable in the EU?

      The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

      This has likely not even occured to these folks. But given the history of the area, they aren't about to change their thinking about the world. I would suggest that they set up a few common points that all of the internet traffic enters an

    • "Does the EU really want Saudia Arabia determining what web content is allowable in the EU?"

      The honest answer to this question will probably surprise you.

  • Contrary to settled law and practice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by davecb ( 6526 ) <davecb@spamcop.net> on Thursday January 10, 2019 @02:46PM (#57938952) Homepage Journal

    In most of the world, if a court says to, for example, "seal" someone's juvenile records, it doesn't expect newspapers to erase them from their archives, but merely to not cite (old form of "link to") them in current publications. Changing to that would be a huge change in settled law, and would cause angry litigation over censorship.

    in the original Spanish case, Mario Costeja González specifically asked for the old, obsolete articles to be added to the site's ROBOTS.TXT file, which is the modern equivalent.

    As I submitted to the Canadian privacy commission, this is what sites in Canada should do, is within the powers of the commissioner to order, and has no special cost to innocent third parties such as Google.

    Canadian legal sites like CanLII (the Canadian Legal Information Institute) already do this. See https://leaflessca.wordpress.c... [wordpress.com]

    --dave

  • I'm Mark David Chapman (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...and I demand my right to be forgotten.

  • Google shouldn't have to apply the aptly so-called right to be forgotten ...

    FTFY.

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