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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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @01:57PM
Relate this to the furor over fake news. Essentially it's a memory hole, where any particular story may not be meaningful, but as a collection gives a very distorted view of history.
Suppose the same sensibility were in effect for the Wild West. Sure you have crime stats, but none of the flavor or public perception of time. It would even be hard to gauge corruption within the system as no concrete evidence can be pointed to to compare how possibly similar situations were handled.
Similarly with "fake" news: it gives insight to the sensibility of the times, what people were thinking, and how those perceptions manifested.
This is little more than a whitewashing of the historical record in some misguided notion of privacy or "truth".