For example, if Google gave France the right to censor content based on "right to be forgotten" laws, why not other laws? For example, nazi memorabilia is illegal in fr but not us (or most countries).
And if Google gave fr the right, why not de? Or cn? Or any other country in the world?
It quite clearly states in the article that the laws apply to individuals requesting their personal data to be removed. This is not censorship. I agree there's a fine line that needs to be walked however I'm very sick and tired of the invasion of privacy that's become acceptable today and Google is an offender. I'v made my personal decisions to move away from as many Google services as possible and use pseudonyms as that's my choice and right, however, I do this because in Canada we don't have the same privacy protections that France does. I am well aware that by using Google Services I'm willingly giving up my information in exchange for their use and I've tailored my life around that assumption, however, not everyone is adept at this like I am and I think it's not morally alright to refuse the deletion of data requested by the individual who should rightfully own and control that data.
I'm very, very, sick of the state of privacy today and I wish Google would've been fined significantly more.
Shouldn't the individuals request that their data is removed from the primary source? If that happens, google will relatively quickly remove those results from their index.
- It is important to highlight the persistent memory of the internet
regarding the information used for the harassment. This information
might stay for ever on the web and will be extremely difficult to erase
completely. This point presents a great challenge for the respect of
the right to be forgotten or for the enforcement of an appropriate
and proportionate data retention policy. Here again the providers of
such platforms are in a position to play a determinant role and their
role could be driven by the respect of data protection rules which
can, if properly implemented, mitigate the side effects produced by
these three factors.
Ignore this next bit - I'm wrong. I'm leaving it here because people have already responded to it. {RTBF arose because a man was a victim of harassment, where the harasser was creating very many websites across the world using fake details to do so with a variety of hosting services who had a variety of responses to the man's legal paperwork.
At that point his only recourse was to go to the search engines and ask them to stop republishing (which is what the search result text snippets are doing) the harassment.}
There are protections built into the RTBF for stuff that's in the public interest.
EU and US have pretty different understanding of rights. US has strong freedom of speech, EU has strong right to privacy.
I don't know where you got that the RTBF came from harassment. The case was about a man who didn't want people to be able to find out that his house had been repossessed by creditors:
" On 5 March 2010, Mr Costeja González, a Spanish national resident in Spain, lodged with the AEPD a complaint against La Vanguardia Ediciones SL, which publishes a daily newspaper with a large circulation, in particular in Catalonia (Spain) (‘La Vanguardia’), and against Google Spain and Google Inc. The complaint was based on the fact that, when an internet user entered Mr Costeja González’s name in the search engine of the Google group (‘Google Search’), he would obtain links to two pages of La Vanguardia’s newspaper, of 19 January and 9 March 1998 respectively, on which an announcement mentioning Mr Costeja González’s name appeared for a real-estate auction connected with attachment proceedings for the recovery of social security debts."
>RTBF arose because a man was a victim of harassment, where the harasser was creating very many websites across the world using fake details to do so with a variety of hosting services who had a variety of responses to the man's legal paperwork.
The ironic thing is the right to be forgotten is about public data, and that is what Google is arguing over. Perhaps there should be a global right to be forgotten, but it has to be implemented in a correct fashion. Opening loopholes for despotic regimes to be an editor over Google search results is not ok.
As for not using the Google services, your comment on the face of it is a nice little narrative. Although ironically the data you share with Google has some of the best privacy protections, and you can delete it at any time you wish. Also it doesn't affect search results, so you are not really doing anything other than taking a moral stand, and limiting your access to services, some of which I personally find quite excellent and good.
Google already is censoring content at DMCA requests. And what about privacy? What would you do to remove some unpleasant information about yourself from the internet?
Presumably, get a lawyer and sue them for defamation, likely at great personal expense. Up against the corporate lawyers of media empires (or search engines), your chances are pretty slim.
With DMCA requests, the expression is deemed unlawful and the DMCA is used ultimately to take down the actual website. That is not the case here as the websites are allowed to continue publishing to the world without penalty.
> Google already is censoring content at DMCA requests
Google not only alerts you to the fact they removed a link due to the DMCA, they even link to the entry in the Chilling Effects database that contains the actual DMCA takedown notice.
The implementation of the "right to be forgotten" specifically disallows a notification of any kind.
Almost everyone complaining about Right To Be Forgotten is almost completely unaware of it's actual requirements. It protects the privacy of private citizens, specifically if the information isn't relevant to the public interest.
In fact, the EU (and I believe, the United Nations actually), has defined privacy as a "fundamental human right". And I'd definitely argue it's a country's first duty to protect the fundamental human rights of it's citizens.
Technically, it already does. You can already get a lawyer, find a way to try and sue someone for false (or private) information online, such as Hulk Hogan's recent suit against Gawker. But that requires lawyers and a lot of money. Privacy isn't just for the rich, this framework to delist information from search engines to protect people's privacy is straightforward and only requires working with a few companies.
The EU has defined privacy, along with 117 other things, to be a fundamental human right. However the EU also contradicts that right with another right of "freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority". In the case of "right to be forgotten" EU law is holding that it is more important for an individual to be able to censor information about themselves than it is for other people to be able to share and receive information about that person. The courts also held, uselessly, that each invocation of the right to be forgotten must be individually balanced against that other right to convey and receive information, and that the burden of proof lies with the respondent charged with removing the information by the individual. In other words the right to be forgotten is effectively absolute, because no person or entity could afford to investigate and respond to each such claim, and is forced to simply accept them all as if they were uniformly meritorious. As a result, the public loses their right to receive and impart information, which is guaranteed by the EU Charter.
So you can argue that "it's a country's first duty to protect the fundamental human rights of it's citizens" but in this instance the courts have erased one of those human rights. Also I wonder if you also believe in reciprocal enforcement of all the various rights guaranteed to Americans by their Constitution and by jurisprudence. You might not be aware, for example, that the most fundamental right of free speech in the US extends not only to individuals but to organizations and corporate entities. Are you prepared for American courts to start laying fines on European companies for infringing on the rights of free speech of American corporations?
I will admit the full extent of the Citizens United decision terrifies me. But even then RTBF doesn't affect information of public interest. So any sort of inappropriate behavior on behalf of a corporation wouldn't really be covered.
The protections in the RTBF ruling for public interest are weak, though, because they require search engines to make the determination themselves, and to defend that determination in each individual case before a court. Obviously it will be much easier for the search engines to just throw away the public interest, because there is no penalty for complying with all RTBF requests.
Could not a website also ask a search engine to defend it's determination to remove a website improperly? Sites like The Guardian should presumably also be able to appeal if their public interest posts are censored.
In a proper appeal process (I cannot say if this is currently in RTBF, I don't know), infringed parties exist which could complain for either way a decision goes, so it's in the best interest of the determining party (in this case Google or Bing) to make the decision most likely to be upheld by an appeals court (or data protection agency, as I think it is in this case).
> In other words the right to be forgotten is effectively absolute, because no person or entity could afford to investigate and respond to each such claim, and is forced to simply accept them all as if they were uniformly meritorious.
No, that's not how it necessarily works. The search teams do not like meddling with their search results so it is reasonable to assume they analyze removal requests carefully and proceed with the removal only for the substantiated ones, in the sense of the court ruling. If the request does not qualify, the probability that the individual would drag the big company into court and win is very low. There is no worry of losing in the court then and the search team won't remove the result.
I don't know the details of that particular case but in France, a lot of laws have penalty clauses in them which doesn't leave much at the discretion of the judge. It's a different judicial system.
EDIT: The commenter above me claimed that this was all about hurting Google, and only Google was held to this standard. It looks like he edited his comment when I posted this link, demonstrating he was incorrect. Hopefully this explains my otherwise odd comment.
The Times should really stop referring to the "right to be forgotten" madness as a privacy restriction as it only touches on public info, it's a censorship law.
They are being fined and ordered to censor public record items globally, say what you will about China but even they don't do that.
Right...and the insane part is they aren't even censoring the primary documents - just the index! It's like not allowing a library to have index card saying "Mein Kampf is located in section 23, row 8 under 'misguided ideologies'", but you do allow them to stock the book itself.
Because this isn't about censorship! Google results are the default answer to 'what something is' online. It's improper for someone's first result online to be fraudulent or irrelevant. So Google is the problem. Not the actual article.
Furthermore, actually removing content from original websites is incredibly hard, incredibly costly, and involves a lot of legal work. Tracing down web hosts all over the planet.
Controlling this at the search engine level, on the other hand, only needs to talk to a handful of companies, and a simple, common framework can ensure individuals are able to expediently request redress for these wrongs against them.
What if one day everyone runs their own indexer, or there's a distributed search engine where people index parts of the web and share it with others like FreeNet/Kazaa? What of sites like archive.org whose job it is to preserve the history of the web, in effect, a history of our culture?
You're talking about in effect, erecting a Great Firewall around Europe so that EU citizens can't surface information that the rest of the world can. But anyone in Europe could use Tor, a foreign proxy, or a VPN to get around this.
Ultimately, if government censorship extends too far, it may push decentralized information indexing and sharing to be more mainstream than the darknets it currently exists on.
If you'd like to help replace Google with a decentralized, publicly-controlled alternative, I think that'd be a great thing!
But that's a very large amount of mystical speculation, Ray. And by and large, if people had their own indexers, we wouldn't have a single search engine determining what people's public reputation is, so this problem would largely cease to exist.
But the reality is, this has nothing to do with 'government censorship'. Google itself admits things like revenge porn should be blocked. (And in fact, it's Google itself that decides whether or not to censor RTBF sites!) Private citizens should have the right to remove personal information with no public bearing from the Internet. If you disagree, feel free to post your social security number and credit card information.
You can't remove anything from the internet, that's the point, and that's why you should be very careful about what information you put in the internet. At best you can temporarily hide it.
Anyone who truly wants to dig up dirt on you, or wants to do a background check, won't rely only on Google.
You say it's not about a company in particular, but the principle, but notice how you are totally ok with a non-Google index.
The reality is, any distributed system would converge eventually, and end up with the same issues you have with Google today, only just like with controlling nukes in a multipolar, vs superpower world, governments would lose power to regulate speech and publishing. Thinks would get harder and more dangerous for those wishing to remove information about themselves from being found.
Notice how quickly people are to go hyperbolic on the precedent of Apple unlocking a single cell phone, because hey, if the FBI can ask Apple to do it, then the Chinese government can too. But I don't see any similar concern about the possible bad precedents European censorship will set for China, Russia, et al.
How can tech companies put up a fight against Chinese requests for censorship, when the European Union is given that option?
Given your history Jake, of nearly daily anti-Google articles on your social feeds, should I not be skeptical that this has less to do with principle, and more to do with your desire to see Google lose a battle or two?
The problem is other people can (and do) put private information about you on the Internet. I am not any more comfortable with a Bing index than a Google index, Ray. Decentralized search, not controlled by a corporation, however, has very different ethics.
The problem is, that for example, right now, your employer could choose the next US President. Google Search has that power. Furthermore, Eric Schmidt is literally working for the Clinton campaign. I don't know how you could fail to see the difference between a decentralized, neutral search index (or at least one that didn't keep it's search algorithms veiled in secrecy) and your employer's completely non-transparent black box with the power to write history.
Google (and Bing or any other search provider) decides through a mysterious algorithm how to rank people's lives. A faceless algorithm can determine whether someone can EVER HOLD A JOB AGAIN. Seriously? You're going to defend that? I know Googlers believe that automation is somewhere close to godliness, but the fact of the matter is, Google ruins lives. And Google doesn't even have the decency to entertain a request for redress without a government passing a law to mandate they do so.
If Google had a customer service team of people that treated people like people, maybe this sort of thing would never have become a problem. And yeah, if Microsoft or Apple had the level of sheer unchecked power coupled with inane irresponsibility that Google has, I'd be up in arms about them too.
And I still feel if you think it's wrong for people to have the right to retract their personal information from the Internet, your social security number should be on it.
It doesn't matter if the algorithm is known, or unknown in a distributed index, the fact is, any ranking algorithm will be vulnerable to poisoning attacks.
Let's say you have a completely distributed search index with no ability for a central authority to curate. An attacker wanting to sway the US election would simply flood the internet with fake sites and link farms, designed to attack the weaknesses in a publicly known algorithm. This is in fact, substantially more likely than Google modifying their own system to favor a candidate.
What this basically means is he who has the most compute resources wins. Powerful entities could still manipulate the result just as anyone who owns more than 50% of the hashing power in the blockchain can dictate it. Dedicated campaigns can do it too (Santorum anyone?) Any coalition or entity with greater resources than the opposition will have an outsized voice.
You're positing a decentralized system absolutely immune from collision or resource constraints, in all likelihood, the systems deployed would have huge compromises that can be manipulated as easy as a Google Bomb, only with less ability to mount a defense. That is, an open index and known algorithm would likely be WORSE at defense against manipulation.
One only needs to look at how long it took to develop defenses to spam on USENET/UUCP/NNTP and SMTP. Even today, the defenses are not perfect, and that's after 20 years of sophisticated development.
The reality is, if you commit a crime that's in the public record, if you're a felon, or had judgements against you, and your employer is going to discriminate against you, then they will find the information. How the hell do you think this worked before Google? You think background checks for job candidates only started when Google launched? The government, marriage, police, and civil court case databases are all public. If I want to find out if you're a criminal or a cheat, I don't need Google.
Your argument that I should 'dox' myself if I feel people shouldn't have a right to retract information from the internet doesn't make any sense. It's precisely because I don't believe you can ever retract such information that I don't post my sex tapes with Kim Kardashian. If I knew I could censor whatever I want, then I'd feel free to dump all kinds of information I don't want to get out.
If someone decides to spread your info on the internet, censoring Google won't save you. People taking revenge carpet bomb information all over many resources like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Wikipedia. Ask the women harassed in the GamerGate fiasco if the biggest issue was Google searches, or social network spam. Have you not seen Encyclopedia Dramatica?
IMHO, if you want to deal with discrimination over knowledge of your public records, pass anti-discrimination laws. Don't rely on security-through-obscurity. If you're living a lie, sooner or later your workplace will find out.
You seem to be assuming everyone is using and contributing to a single index, or that everyone's using the same ranking algorithm. Both are problematic.
Yes, you can file checks with government agencies or what-have-you, the problem is Google isn't a government agency. Google is the court of Google. You don't even have to be guilty to be sentenced for life by it.
Ray, I've never met you, but if I claim that you've molested a child or something, there's a possibility, depending where that's said, that it becomes attached to your name in search results. Even with no official court record, evidence, etc. your name may be permanently tainted.
Your unwillingness to dox yourself is a problem because for millions of people every year, it's not a choice. Let's say I have your social security number, and I post it online. As far as your viewpoint is concerned, (you can't remove anything from the Internet), your identity is permanently compromised, for life. What would you do if that happened, what would be your first step? You're suggesting it's okay that crimes against you involving your personal information should be permanent and irrevocable.
Privacy IS security-through-obscurity. Time and time again, I've seen that Googlers fail to grasp that concept. Privacy = obscurity. And if you are opposed to obscurity, than you're similarly opposed to privacy.
But the spanish newspaper hosting the article in the case that lead to this law _is_ under EU regulation, so I think in this case the library is 'all websites hosted in the EU' and google is just the card index.
The objected results are being removed from search results page only for specified queries (name of the individual...). The documents themselves stay in search index and can be found via other queries not specified in the removal request.
It has nothing to do with censorship. In fact, the requirements of the Right To Be Forgotten are pretty clearly stated to ensure that anything that the public deserves to know or should know does not qualify for RTBF protection.
Unfortunately, Google's PR machine was in full force against this law, and a lot of people are completely unaware of it's very reasonable limitations.
The funny part is, people's upset with it, were actually because Google overextended improperly in applying the law to invalid submissions (which strangely, worked WELL for their PR).
"Google indeed acknowledged that some of its search result removals, affecting articles that were of public interest, were incorrect, and reinstated the links a week later."
>It has nothing to do with censorship. In fact, the requirements of the Right To Be Forgotten are pretty clearly stated to ensure that anything that the public deserves to know or should know does not qualify for RTBF protection.
So ultimately, some body has to decide what does and doesn't qualify. We call that body a "censor" and their work, "censorship".
This is not some body arbitrarily requesting removal of information. This is a body judging the legitimacy of requests on the behalf of a private individual. That is not censorship and I believe it's an attack on a fundamental human right to say that Google has the power to do whatever they wish with your private information that is outside of the public interest. Google is not a journalist or a news source.
Google is not digging up any information that hasn't already been made public. Any news stories it surfaces about an individual are part of the public historical record.
There are a lot of things that are made public that aren’t news stories. Should revenge porn be part of “the public historical record”? Can I publish all your private info on a random website and then claim it’s “part of the public historical record”?
If any part of the site is meant to assassinate my character, I could sue you for defamation in the necessary jurisdiction. Alternatively, I could work to improve the SEO scores of my personal and professional pages, acknowledge that you are attempting to character assassinate me in my pages, and move on with my life. The problem is that in reality what's happening is that people who made stupid mistakes as teenagers are now realizing that their arrest record is searchable, and I feel terrible for them, but wouldn't it be better dealt with by passing laws to thwart the arrest record sites rather than forcing every site that indexes content to delist on a case-by-case basis.
You keep harping on and on and on in this discussion about "private" information. What you are referring to are unauthorized disclosures. That is not the issue here, and I don't think anyone has a problem with removing that. Please stop tossing out this irrelevant strawman.
The issue is redaction of authorized, public information from the index.
That body is usually the search engine. Censorship is not the right word; if the request is granted, the documents are not being hidden absolutely, only for specified queries (name of the individual). "Protecting the individual" is better expression; it is about the search engine tuning its results to reduce the harm that is being done to the requestor.
I'll copy-paste my reply to every comment you make, since you seem to really like making this non argument.
Gawker could chose to relocate it's business outside the US, but as long as they are a US corporation, they are bound by US laws and rulings handed down by US courts. Furthermore, defamation laws for publishing content are very different than the right to be forgotten laws which apply to indexing content. No one is arguing that the content is defamation, since it is true and reasonable, the argument is that the content is no longer relevant to a person's character (eg shoplifting arrest as a teenager that made local news).
No, this is not a censorship law. This is about private individuals requesting potentially harmful or embarrassing information from being propagated and easily searchable. This is putting power into the private citizens hand.
This is not a removal of critical speech or journalism. Calling this censorship is the equivalent of calling blinds on your living room window censorship. Privacy is not censorship.
Much of what is covered by RTBF is stuff that should be covered by blinds in your home, but may have been illegally brought to the Internet. Such as revenge porn.
I'll try and explain it in my point of view from an event that happened to me.
I was doing a job interview when I was younger and it was going well. I got scheduled in for a second interview. Right before my second interview I got a call from the manager saying that they didn't want to hire me. I asked why and he said this "I was taking a look at your Twitter profile and saw that you were holding a gun". What actually was going on here was my profile picture was me holding a paintball gun with my friends from a weekend event a month before. I was told that they don't want people with my image as a part of the company. (this is a whole conversation in itself but I'll leave it here).
So after this I went and removed my picture. Done deal; problem solved.
Now, what If I didn't have the option of removing that picture? This was my personal profile. This was MY information. Would it hurt future job prospects? What if someone posted revenge porn or myself (no this doesn't exists online or anywhere else). What if I went through a goth phase in high-school and a potential employer or volunteer organization didn't like it. There are many, many scenarios like this. Some of which end very very badly for people, and others just very annoying.
The point here is that there is permanence on the internet but individuals change. And as an individual I should have the right to remove that information. In the modern world it's not realistic to ask "just keep everything offline". I fear for my eventual children who will do what kids do and will have that stuck with them for their entire lives. I'm very happy that nobody can Google what I did when I was 12.
The blinds analogy highlights the idea that behind those blinds we have(had) photo albums, journals, arguments, phases of life, conversations, and skeletons in our closet that we had control over. Today we no longer have control over that information (and stay culturally relevant in any context) and top it off with the horrendous privacy records of companies like Google and Facebook that drive our lives I think we have the right to have laws like this.
>And as an individual I should have the right to remove that information.
Information that you published, sure, but the "right to be forgotten" is about what other people published about you, and your inconvenience does not trump those other people's rights.
When a news story about you is inconvenient and damaging to your reputation is when it matters most that it stay online and reachable.
Yes. I agree. That's exactly what I've been arguing for. Maybe you should read my many arguments in this topic again. I'm arguing against people claiming that this will be used for taking down of news articles and censorship. I thing those things are bad. I'm talking about online harassment, shaming, and public information detrimental to the individual that was posted by that individual or others in attempt to harass out of spite. I'm not arguing legitimate news articles should be censored. I strongly believe in freedom of the press and speech.
There's a difference between whistle blowing/journalism and harassment and public shaming. We're not in the dark ages anymore.
Well the company might have been upset that you willingly used that picture as the most accurate description of yourself. If it was a picture that someone else posted of you, they might have been less upset.
Also, even without right to be forgotten, you could legally compel people to take down the picture, and google to delist the picture via DMCA request assuming you or someone you are friends with took the picture.
Ah les Francais. Show le Google our force. 100.000 EUR fine. Regardless of whether the decision is right or wrong, the real question is: will it work. Will they make Google and other companies submit with such methods?
Unless Google wants do withdraw its business from France and potentially all Europe, it will comply. I think it is quite probable it will comply, it is in its financial interests.
Google has fought unreasonable Chinese demands, and Google has lost a lot of Chinese market share as a result. Perhaps Google will also not bow to unreasonable EU demands.
"Right to be forgotten" is a euphemism for censorship, and censorship is anathema to the Internet. That's the beginning and end of the matter. Stop legislating fantasies.
Censor: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.
The reason someone's search results are considered 'objectionable' is because they consider those results private. The private citizen, in the case, is the censor. The french government is just the enforcing body behind that censorship.
You are using a general definition "removing objectionable information" here but most people, when reading "censorship" will understand it refers to a different concept like "deplorable practice of suppressing communication between people by force". You cannot, in general, put personal information regarding an individual in place of that communication and call exercising right to control personal data censorship. The right to be forgotten does not mean anything objectionable can be removed and it does not apply to public figures, companies or corporations. It only applies to individuals and search queries containing their name. In special cases the objected search result is important to the public, the right to be forgotten does not apply. So no, it is not censorship.
Ah les Francais. Show le Google our force. 100.000 EUR fine. Regardless of whether the decision is right or wrong, the real question is: will it work. Will they make Google and other companies submit with such methods?
Why do American commenters become so defensive whenever an American company operating abroad is subject to local laws? Foreign countries aren't subject to the first amendment of the US constitution, and a lot of other countries both through law and through social norms don't consider freedom of speech absolute.
This law doesn't allow individuals to remove any information they find distasteful, it allows individuals to apply to remove information about THEM. And there is already built in a "public interest" defence, meaning if there is a public interest to the link then the link stays.
Ultimately this isn't black and white, and there are some interesting use cases of this Right to be forgotten (e.g. revenge porn), I'd suggest people read the Wikipedia article top to bottom, it is quite fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
But I'll say this, whatever opinion you come away with, you cannot criticise France for not holding up to the US's ideals. If Google doesn't want to operate under the EU's privacy standards then Google can leave.
I also find it slightly ironic that Americans on one hand whine endlessly about other countries violating perceived rights while on the other operating the world's largest surveillance dragnet, and Americans routinely say (paraphrasing) "it is unacceptable to monitor Americans, but fine to spy on foreigners!" So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France then I'm going to argue that the US's 4th amendment should too!
The defensiveness, at least for me, is that the laws are being applied globally. Nobody should agree with US laws applying in France. Seems a lot of people agree with EU laws applying in the US. The internet is global, laws are not. I have the same opinion if a French company, doing business in the US, is told how it must do things in France by US regulators (as opposed to its part in the US).
> So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France
Did you read the article? It's the opposite (EU law applying outside of the EU)
The law doesn’t apply globally: it allows a French citizen to ask Google to have their info removed. Period. It doesn’t allow US people to do the same. That this info is hidden in all countries Google operates in is a side-effect. As I wrote in another comment when Gawker is sued for publishing some private info about an American you’re not expecting Gawker to censor itself in the US only.
> The law doesn’t apply globally: it allows a French citizen to ask Google to have their info removed. Period. It doesn’t allow US people to do the same. That this info is hidden in all countries Google operates in is a side-effect.
Currently the info is only hidden if Google thinks that you are searching from within Europe.
Gawker could chose to relocate it's business outside the US, but as long as they are a US corporation, they are bound by US laws and rulings handed down by US courts. Furthermore, defamation laws for publishing content are very different than the right to be forgotten laws which apply to indexing content. No one is arguing that the content is defamation, since it is true and reasonable, the argument is that the content is no longer relevant to a person's character (eg shoplifting arrest as a teenager that made local news).
Bear in mind, the way Google applied the law 'only in France' originally was to delist the search result in google.fr, but French citizens could simply go to google.com and the results would be there. So Google was not complying with French law, even in France.
Apparently, they've since taken the step of adding country detection, regardless of which domain you go to, to ensure RTBF is applied based on where you're browsing from.
However, the extended point, is that France has granted those individuals certain rights. It's in France's citizens' best interests for France to protect their citizens' rights globally.
Note that if an American is incarcerated for a violation of another country's laws, the US will often actually intervene and try to negotiate for their release. Your country is protecting your rights (as your country defines them) even when you're outside of their borders.
That's the sort of example where the US may intervene (and the State department's quote here suggests protecting US citizens abroad is a key goal here). According to the law of that country, these people have committed crimes, but the US interprets that law to be 'wrong', and may negotiate for their release.
Google has already complied in France - google.fr has been censored. The issue is whether a French court can require global censorship of the information.
Not only that, it has made it so that French users are only able to use Google.fr. Until a few weeks ago they could use Google.com as well. Now they would need to use VPN to do that.
> So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France then I'm going to argue that the US's 4th amendment should too!
I would support that; while that's not a universal position among American civil libertarians, it's not particularly unheard of.
> "it is unacceptable to monitor Americans, but fine to spy on foreigners!"
Btw, the US isn't the only country that does this. Spying on foreign countries is something most other countries try to do as well. France is doing the same thing[0][1].
I'll copy-paste my reply to every comment you make, since you seem to really like making this non argument.
Gawker could chose to relocate it's business outside the US, but as long as they are a US corporation, they are bound by US laws and rulings handed down by US courts. Furthermore, defamation laws for publishing content are very different than the right to be forgotten laws which apply to indexing content. No one is arguing that the content is defamation, since it is true and reasonable, the argument is that the content is no longer relevant to a person's character (eg shoplifting arrest as a teenager that made local news).
> Americans routinely say (paraphrasing) "it is unacceptable to monitor Americans, but fine to spy on foreigners!"
I think you'll find that this viewpoint isn't routinely said on this American internet forum. The prevailing opinion here is that dragnet surveillance in general is bad and should not be practiced by the U.S. government.
Not to mention, France (among many others) routinely conducts digital surveillance, including industrial espionage, against American and EU citizens.
Do you think a customer service representative at Google should be the one making this decision? Seems like it should be a French official. There are hundreds of thousands to deal with though. And over half are invalid (examples include public officials delisting articles critical of them, etc)
This is strawman! A reasonable right to privacy is defined as a fundamental human right both by the United Nations and the European Union. The United States constructively by precedent has a right to privacy though it's not explicit and clearly, rarely followed.
Right to be forgotten, as the EU defines it, is specifically written to protect individual citizens, not obscure information that is 'in the public interest' such as Chinese history.
Let's put this in a way that you could understand.
So what's to prevent China from enacting a law that protects the privacy of its leaders and then demanding Google to remove all traces of any mention of any of its leaders, past or present, from the entire Internet?
If you think that's a hypothetical scenario, you would be well served to read up on what's going on in Thailand with regards to writing about the king there.
> So what's to prevent China from enacting a law that protects the privacy of its leaders and then demanding Google to remove all traces of any mention of any of its leaders, past or present, from the entire Internet?
Nothing, because China is sovereign state. On the other hand, the European right to be forgotten does not require Google to comply with China's government demands. What China may demand of Google has nothing to do with the current topic.
Sure, because we obviously can't make logical conclusions of consequences from actions regarding the issue at hand.
Once Google starts applying local laws globally, there's no stopping it. Everything even remotely controversial (in someone's opinion) will slowly, but surely, disappear from Google. It may take a while, but it will happen.
It makes sense that if the protection of privacy of the individuals by de-listing is to be effective, it must be applied to all search requests, wherever they appear to come from or whatever google domain they are sent to.
This does not mean controversial things will disappear from Google. The ruling and the penalty are about de-listing of specific search results, not documents. And only for specific group of queries, involving individual's name. The documents linked in de-listed results will still be available in search via all other queries.
We're talking about China creating a new "China right to be forgotten" law, and with that new law then forcing google to censor information globally. We're not talking about China doing anything with the European law.
If France is able to pull this off, and Google doesn't just decide to close all of its French offices, someone will start an uncensored search engine based exclusively in the US, subject only to American jurisdiction. Anyone trying to dig up dirt, like a prospective employer, will search on that instead. You might say, France will then block that search engine. Okay, so people will use one of the hundreds of web proxies that can be easily found by searching "web proxy" on Google, or Tor. And yes, people will go through this trouble, especially in a place where it's almost impossible to fire someone, like France.
I think there must be a fundamental difference in the way Americans view privacy vs how Europeans view privacy.
To me, 'privacy' means that my actions performed at home (or in other places where I can reasonably assume to be alone or in private company) should not be under the scrutiny of others.
I should have the right to act how I want in public as well, so long as my actions do not affect other people. But I don't see how I could reasonably expect to have privacy in that case.
107 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadI also find it funny how Google is trying to take the stance of "freedom of expression". What a joke.
For example, if Google gave France the right to censor content based on "right to be forgotten" laws, why not other laws? For example, nazi memorabilia is illegal in fr but not us (or most countries).
And if Google gave fr the right, why not de? Or cn? Or any other country in the world?
I'm very, very, sick of the state of privacy today and I wish Google would've been fined significantly more.
EDIT: for grammar
Here's some thinking from 2010 about right to be forgotten and EU data protection law: https://secure.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/shared/Document...
Ignore this next bit - I'm wrong. I'm leaving it here because people have already responded to it. {RTBF arose because a man was a victim of harassment, where the harasser was creating very many websites across the world using fake details to do so with a variety of hosting services who had a variety of responses to the man's legal paperwork.At that point his only recourse was to go to the search engines and ask them to stop republishing (which is what the search result text snippets are doing) the harassment.}
There are protections built into the RTBF for stuff that's in the public interest.
EU and US have pretty different understanding of rights. US has strong freedom of speech, EU has strong right to privacy.
" On 5 March 2010, Mr Costeja González, a Spanish national resident in Spain, lodged with the AEPD a complaint against La Vanguardia Ediciones SL, which publishes a daily newspaper with a large circulation, in particular in Catalonia (Spain) (‘La Vanguardia’), and against Google Spain and Google Inc. The complaint was based on the fact that, when an internet user entered Mr Costeja González’s name in the search engine of the Google group (‘Google Search’), he would obtain links to two pages of La Vanguardia’s newspaper, of 19 January and 9 March 1998 respectively, on which an announcement mentioning Mr Costeja González’s name appeared for a real-estate auction connected with attachment proceedings for the recovery of social security debts."
No, RTBF was invented when Mario Costeja González decided that a perfectly factual archived news article concerning him (http://hemeroteca.lavanguardia.com/preview/1998/01/19/pagina...) was inconvenient.
As for not using the Google services, your comment on the face of it is a nice little narrative. Although ironically the data you share with Google has some of the best privacy protections, and you can delete it at any time you wish. Also it doesn't affect search results, so you are not really doing anything other than taking a moral stand, and limiting your access to services, some of which I personally find quite excellent and good.
Google not only alerts you to the fact they removed a link due to the DMCA, they even link to the entry in the Chilling Effects database that contains the actual DMCA takedown notice.
The implementation of the "right to be forgotten" specifically disallows a notification of any kind.
In fact, the EU (and I believe, the United Nations actually), has defined privacy as a "fundamental human right". And I'd definitely argue it's a country's first duty to protect the fundamental human rights of it's citizens.
No, it doesn't
> You can already get a lawyer, find a way to try and sue someone for false (or private) information online
The information is not false and is not private
So you can argue that "it's a country's first duty to protect the fundamental human rights of it's citizens" but in this instance the courts have erased one of those human rights. Also I wonder if you also believe in reciprocal enforcement of all the various rights guaranteed to Americans by their Constitution and by jurisprudence. You might not be aware, for example, that the most fundamental right of free speech in the US extends not only to individuals but to organizations and corporate entities. Are you prepared for American courts to start laying fines on European companies for infringing on the rights of free speech of American corporations?
In a proper appeal process (I cannot say if this is currently in RTBF, I don't know), infringed parties exist which could complain for either way a decision goes, so it's in the best interest of the determining party (in this case Google or Bing) to make the decision most likely to be upheld by an appeals court (or data protection agency, as I think it is in this case).
No, that's not how it necessarily works. The search teams do not like meddling with their search results so it is reasonable to assume they analyze removal requests carefully and proceed with the removal only for the substantiated ones, in the sense of the court ruling. If the request does not qualify, the probability that the individual would drag the big company into court and win is very low. There is no worry of losing in the court then and the search team won't remove the result.
If it protects the privacy of citizens why it doesn't pull the information from the source and just from the search engines?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11356302
EDIT: The commenter above me claimed that this was all about hurting Google, and only Google was held to this standard. It looks like he edited his comment when I posted this link, demonstrating he was incorrect. Hopefully this explains my otherwise odd comment.
They are being fined and ordered to censor public record items globally, say what you will about China but even they don't do that.
Furthermore, actually removing content from original websites is incredibly hard, incredibly costly, and involves a lot of legal work. Tracing down web hosts all over the planet.
Controlling this at the search engine level, on the other hand, only needs to talk to a handful of companies, and a simple, common framework can ensure individuals are able to expediently request redress for these wrongs against them.
You're talking about in effect, erecting a Great Firewall around Europe so that EU citizens can't surface information that the rest of the world can. But anyone in Europe could use Tor, a foreign proxy, or a VPN to get around this.
Ultimately, if government censorship extends too far, it may push decentralized information indexing and sharing to be more mainstream than the darknets it currently exists on.
But that's a very large amount of mystical speculation, Ray. And by and large, if people had their own indexers, we wouldn't have a single search engine determining what people's public reputation is, so this problem would largely cease to exist.
But the reality is, this has nothing to do with 'government censorship'. Google itself admits things like revenge porn should be blocked. (And in fact, it's Google itself that decides whether or not to censor RTBF sites!) Private citizens should have the right to remove personal information with no public bearing from the Internet. If you disagree, feel free to post your social security number and credit card information.
Anyone who truly wants to dig up dirt on you, or wants to do a background check, won't rely only on Google.
You say it's not about a company in particular, but the principle, but notice how you are totally ok with a non-Google index.
The reality is, any distributed system would converge eventually, and end up with the same issues you have with Google today, only just like with controlling nukes in a multipolar, vs superpower world, governments would lose power to regulate speech and publishing. Thinks would get harder and more dangerous for those wishing to remove information about themselves from being found.
Notice how quickly people are to go hyperbolic on the precedent of Apple unlocking a single cell phone, because hey, if the FBI can ask Apple to do it, then the Chinese government can too. But I don't see any similar concern about the possible bad precedents European censorship will set for China, Russia, et al.
How can tech companies put up a fight against Chinese requests for censorship, when the European Union is given that option?
Given your history Jake, of nearly daily anti-Google articles on your social feeds, should I not be skeptical that this has less to do with principle, and more to do with your desire to see Google lose a battle or two?
And before you chalk this up to my employment at Google, maybe you should look at my history in trying to prevent censorship of this form, going all the way back to the 90s as one of the authors of the early anonymizing internet proxies in 1996 (https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/privacy-compcon97-ww..., search for 'Decense', or https://web.archive.org/web/20011129060515/http://www.clark....)
I have always absolutely opposed censorship, of any kind, by any entity.
The problem is, that for example, right now, your employer could choose the next US President. Google Search has that power. Furthermore, Eric Schmidt is literally working for the Clinton campaign. I don't know how you could fail to see the difference between a decentralized, neutral search index (or at least one that didn't keep it's search algorithms veiled in secrecy) and your employer's completely non-transparent black box with the power to write history.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-co...
Google (and Bing or any other search provider) decides through a mysterious algorithm how to rank people's lives. A faceless algorithm can determine whether someone can EVER HOLD A JOB AGAIN. Seriously? You're going to defend that? I know Googlers believe that automation is somewhere close to godliness, but the fact of the matter is, Google ruins lives. And Google doesn't even have the decency to entertain a request for redress without a government passing a law to mandate they do so.
If Google had a customer service team of people that treated people like people, maybe this sort of thing would never have become a problem. And yeah, if Microsoft or Apple had the level of sheer unchecked power coupled with inane irresponsibility that Google has, I'd be up in arms about them too.
And I still feel if you think it's wrong for people to have the right to retract their personal information from the Internet, your social security number should be on it.
Let's say you have a completely distributed search index with no ability for a central authority to curate. An attacker wanting to sway the US election would simply flood the internet with fake sites and link farms, designed to attack the weaknesses in a publicly known algorithm. This is in fact, substantially more likely than Google modifying their own system to favor a candidate.
What this basically means is he who has the most compute resources wins. Powerful entities could still manipulate the result just as anyone who owns more than 50% of the hashing power in the blockchain can dictate it. Dedicated campaigns can do it too (Santorum anyone?) Any coalition or entity with greater resources than the opposition will have an outsized voice.
You're positing a decentralized system absolutely immune from collision or resource constraints, in all likelihood, the systems deployed would have huge compromises that can be manipulated as easy as a Google Bomb, only with less ability to mount a defense. That is, an open index and known algorithm would likely be WORSE at defense against manipulation.
One only needs to look at how long it took to develop defenses to spam on USENET/UUCP/NNTP and SMTP. Even today, the defenses are not perfect, and that's after 20 years of sophisticated development.
The reality is, if you commit a crime that's in the public record, if you're a felon, or had judgements against you, and your employer is going to discriminate against you, then they will find the information. How the hell do you think this worked before Google? You think background checks for job candidates only started when Google launched? The government, marriage, police, and civil court case databases are all public. If I want to find out if you're a criminal or a cheat, I don't need Google.
Your argument that I should 'dox' myself if I feel people shouldn't have a right to retract information from the internet doesn't make any sense. It's precisely because I don't believe you can ever retract such information that I don't post my sex tapes with Kim Kardashian. If I knew I could censor whatever I want, then I'd feel free to dump all kinds of information I don't want to get out.
If someone decides to spread your info on the internet, censoring Google won't save you. People taking revenge carpet bomb information all over many resources like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Wikipedia. Ask the women harassed in the GamerGate fiasco if the biggest issue was Google searches, or social network spam. Have you not seen Encyclopedia Dramatica?
IMHO, if you want to deal with discrimination over knowledge of your public records, pass anti-discrimination laws. Don't rely on security-through-obscurity. If you're living a lie, sooner or later your workplace will find out.
Yes, you can file checks with government agencies or what-have-you, the problem is Google isn't a government agency. Google is the court of Google. You don't even have to be guilty to be sentenced for life by it.
Ray, I've never met you, but if I claim that you've molested a child or something, there's a possibility, depending where that's said, that it becomes attached to your name in search results. Even with no official court record, evidence, etc. your name may be permanently tainted.
Your unwillingness to dox yourself is a problem because for millions of people every year, it's not a choice. Let's say I have your social security number, and I post it online. As far as your viewpoint is concerned, (you can't remove anything from the Internet), your identity is permanently compromised, for life. What would you do if that happened, what would be your first step? You're suggesting it's okay that crimes against you involving your personal information should be permanent and irrevocable.
Privacy IS security-through-obscurity. Time and time again, I've seen that Googlers fail to grasp that concept. Privacy = obscurity. And if you are opposed to obscurity, than you're similarly opposed to privacy.
Unfortunately, Google's PR machine was in full force against this law, and a lot of people are completely unaware of it's very reasonable limitations.
The funny part is, people's upset with it, were actually because Google overextended improperly in applying the law to invalid submissions (which strangely, worked WELL for their PR).
"Google indeed acknowledged that some of its search result removals, affecting articles that were of public interest, were incorrect, and reinstated the links a week later."
So ultimately, some body has to decide what does and doesn't qualify. We call that body a "censor" and their work, "censorship".
The issue is redaction of authorized, public information from the index.
Absolutely, and kudos to Google for fighting this ruling. This is an important dispute over jurisdiction, and it needs to be resolved sanely.
Gawker could chose to relocate it's business outside the US, but as long as they are a US corporation, they are bound by US laws and rulings handed down by US courts. Furthermore, defamation laws for publishing content are very different than the right to be forgotten laws which apply to indexing content. No one is arguing that the content is defamation, since it is true and reasonable, the argument is that the content is no longer relevant to a person's character (eg shoplifting arrest as a teenager that made local news).
This is not a removal of critical speech or journalism. Calling this censorship is the equivalent of calling blinds on your living room window censorship. Privacy is not censorship.
I was doing a job interview when I was younger and it was going well. I got scheduled in for a second interview. Right before my second interview I got a call from the manager saying that they didn't want to hire me. I asked why and he said this "I was taking a look at your Twitter profile and saw that you were holding a gun". What actually was going on here was my profile picture was me holding a paintball gun with my friends from a weekend event a month before. I was told that they don't want people with my image as a part of the company. (this is a whole conversation in itself but I'll leave it here).
So after this I went and removed my picture. Done deal; problem solved.
Now, what If I didn't have the option of removing that picture? This was my personal profile. This was MY information. Would it hurt future job prospects? What if someone posted revenge porn or myself (no this doesn't exists online or anywhere else). What if I went through a goth phase in high-school and a potential employer or volunteer organization didn't like it. There are many, many scenarios like this. Some of which end very very badly for people, and others just very annoying.
The point here is that there is permanence on the internet but individuals change. And as an individual I should have the right to remove that information. In the modern world it's not realistic to ask "just keep everything offline". I fear for my eventual children who will do what kids do and will have that stuck with them for their entire lives. I'm very happy that nobody can Google what I did when I was 12.
The blinds analogy highlights the idea that behind those blinds we have(had) photo albums, journals, arguments, phases of life, conversations, and skeletons in our closet that we had control over. Today we no longer have control over that information (and stay culturally relevant in any context) and top it off with the horrendous privacy records of companies like Google and Facebook that drive our lives I think we have the right to have laws like this.
Information that you published, sure, but the "right to be forgotten" is about what other people published about you, and your inconvenience does not trump those other people's rights.
When a news story about you is inconvenient and damaging to your reputation is when it matters most that it stay online and reachable.
There's a difference between whistle blowing/journalism and harassment and public shaming. We're not in the dark ages anymore.
Also, even without right to be forgotten, you could legally compel people to take down the picture, and google to delist the picture via DMCA request assuming you or someone you are friends with took the picture.
"Right to be forgotten" is a euphemism for censorship, and censorship is anathema to the Internet. That's the beginning and end of the matter. Stop legislating fantasies.
The reason someone's search results are considered 'objectionable' is because they consider those results private. The private citizen, in the case, is the censor. The french government is just the enforcing body behind that censorship.
This law doesn't allow individuals to remove any information they find distasteful, it allows individuals to apply to remove information about THEM. And there is already built in a "public interest" defence, meaning if there is a public interest to the link then the link stays.
Ultimately this isn't black and white, and there are some interesting use cases of this Right to be forgotten (e.g. revenge porn), I'd suggest people read the Wikipedia article top to bottom, it is quite fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
But I'll say this, whatever opinion you come away with, you cannot criticise France for not holding up to the US's ideals. If Google doesn't want to operate under the EU's privacy standards then Google can leave.
I also find it slightly ironic that Americans on one hand whine endlessly about other countries violating perceived rights while on the other operating the world's largest surveillance dragnet, and Americans routinely say (paraphrasing) "it is unacceptable to monitor Americans, but fine to spy on foreigners!" So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France then I'm going to argue that the US's 4th amendment should too!
> So if you're going to start arguing that the US's 1st amendment should apply in France
Did you read the article? It's the opposite (EU law applying outside of the EU)
Currently the info is only hidden if Google thinks that you are searching from within Europe.
Apparently, they've since taken the step of adding country detection, regardless of which domain you go to, to ensure RTBF is applied based on where you're browsing from.
However, the extended point, is that France has granted those individuals certain rights. It's in France's citizens' best interests for France to protect their citizens' rights globally.
Note that if an American is incarcerated for a violation of another country's laws, the US will often actually intervene and try to negotiate for their release. Your country is protecting your rights (as your country defines them) even when you're outside of their borders.
I see things like this periodically: http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2016-03-19/esca... and I wouldn't call that extraordinary.
That's the sort of example where the US may intervene (and the State department's quote here suggests protecting US citizens abroad is a key goal here). According to the law of that country, these people have committed crimes, but the US interprets that law to be 'wrong', and may negotiate for their release.
I would support that; while that's not a universal position among American civil libertarians, it's not particularly unheard of.
Btw, the US isn't the only country that does this. Spying on foreign countries is something most other countries try to do as well. France is doing the same thing[0][1].
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/04/france-electron...
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/frances-government-aim...
Gawker could chose to relocate it's business outside the US, but as long as they are a US corporation, they are bound by US laws and rulings handed down by US courts. Furthermore, defamation laws for publishing content are very different than the right to be forgotten laws which apply to indexing content. No one is arguing that the content is defamation, since it is true and reasonable, the argument is that the content is no longer relevant to a person's character (eg shoplifting arrest as a teenager that made local news).
This is a European giving leaving his opinion.
I think you'll find that this viewpoint isn't routinely said on this American internet forum. The prevailing opinion here is that dragnet surveillance in general is bad and should not be practiced by the U.S. government.
Not to mention, France (among many others) routinely conducts digital surveillance, including industrial espionage, against American and EU citizens.
This is madness.
Right to be forgotten, as the EU defines it, is specifically written to protect individual citizens, not obscure information that is 'in the public interest' such as Chinese history.
Let's put this in a way that you could understand.
So what's to prevent China from enacting a law that protects the privacy of its leaders and then demanding Google to remove all traces of any mention of any of its leaders, past or present, from the entire Internet?
If you think that's a hypothetical scenario, you would be well served to read up on what's going on in Thailand with regards to writing about the king there.
Nothing, because China is sovereign state. On the other hand, the European right to be forgotten does not require Google to comply with China's government demands. What China may demand of Google has nothing to do with the current topic.
Once Google starts applying local laws globally, there's no stopping it. Everything even remotely controversial (in someone's opinion) will slowly, but surely, disappear from Google. It may take a while, but it will happen.
https://www.cnil.fr/sites/default/files/atoms/files/d2016-05...
It makes sense that if the protection of privacy of the individuals by de-listing is to be effective, it must be applied to all search requests, wherever they appear to come from or whatever google domain they are sent to.
This does not mean controversial things will disappear from Google. The ruling and the penalty are about de-listing of specific search results, not documents. And only for specific group of queries, involving individual's name. The documents linked in de-listed results will still be available in search via all other queries.
Sounds like a stupid sword to fall on.
To me, 'privacy' means that my actions performed at home (or in other places where I can reasonably assume to be alone or in private company) should not be under the scrutiny of others.
I should have the right to act how I want in public as well, so long as my actions do not affect other people. But I don't see how I could reasonably expect to have privacy in that case.
Do Europeans have a different view?