Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Monday December 12 2016, @06:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the please-block-my-myspace-page dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story concerning Google's enforcement of search privacy laws across international borders:

What if links to stories about someone's past—stories about defrauding an international business or about medical tourism malpractice—were removed from Google search in your country, not because of your local laws but because someone was able to use the laws of another country. How would you feel about that?

That question may seem simplistic.  But it goes to the heart of a very important debate that is taking place now in Europe, initially between some Data Protection Authorities and, next year, in court. At stake: whether Europe's right to be forgotten—which allows people in EU countries to request removal of certain links from name search results—should reach beyond the borders of Europe and into countries which have different laws.

Google believes it should not. That's why, for much of the last year, we've been  defending the idea that each country should be able to balance freedom of expression and privacy in the way that it chooses, not in the way that another country chooses.

Can the requirements of different countries be balanced at all?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @06:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @06:32AM (#440238)

    And they are written off as cranks, partisans, or conspiracy theorists.

    There a largish section of the population that if it didn't happen on the web, it didn't happen. Worse, they are fairly arrogant in their ignorance, not realizing there is another world out there that isn't digital.

    Most of these argument are more about control to access of information, since if anyone bothered, the relevant info could be found by other means.

    In due time, there will be enough dirt on everybody to where only the most serious mis-steps are scrutinized and the right to be forgotten won't matter, instead of the outrage culture that is currently in vogue.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @06:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @06:42AM (#440240)

    Are for 'them', not 'us'. If they were for us then the right to be forgotten would be enshrined in corporate data retention law and *NOTHING* could be collected or stored without the customer/end user/referenced person's explicit written permission (or maybe crypto-identifier nowadays, since old-style signatures are easy to duplicate, even with variations nowadays, and aren't effective in most circumstances of the digital age.)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @06:48AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @06:48AM (#440241)

      Yeah, I still utterly baffled that "identity theft" is a thing.

      Any sane person would look at that and think "your verification sucks".

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @08:27AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @08:27AM (#440267)

        People being able to take random pictures of you and post them online, only to work hard to take them down and then like a bad STD infection pop back up when you least expect them years later.

        That is really what current privacy laws are: The equivalent of a viral infection with the legal framework acting like an expensive drug that only some have the ability to take to fight off the infection.

  • (Score: 2) by bryan on Monday December 12 2016, @07:02PM

    by bryan (29) <bryan@pipedot.org> on Monday December 12 2016, @07:02PM (#440504) Homepage Journal

    We've always been at war with Eastasia. History must be rewritten to fix any errors to the contrary.