Under the recent controversial "right to be forgotten" EU ruling, the search engines (well, mostly Google) are required to remove the links that point to old, inaccurate or irrelevant information from the search results if the person involved requests it. This is only applied when the search terms include the person's name — the links can still be found by using different search terms. In case of Google, delisting has been limited to the European sub-domains, but the EU wants Google to expand it to it's core .com domain, as reported by the BBC:
At present, visitors are diverted to localised editions of the US company's search tool - such as Google.co.uk and Google.fr - when they initially try to visit the Google.com site.
However, a link is provided at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen offering an option to switch to the international .com version. This link does not appear if the users attempted to go to a regional version in the first place.
Even so, it means it is possible for people in Europe to easily opt out of the censored lists.
The data watchdogs said[pdf] this "cannot be considered a sufficient means to guarantee the rights" of citizens living in the union's 28 member countries.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday November 27 2014, @04:34AM
Read https://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt.html [wikileaks.org]. It is part technical and part political. However, it is apparent that senior Google staff provide arms-length diplomacy for the US Government.
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