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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: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday December 12 2016, @06:34PM
Given the ruling's basis in data-protection law, I believe it's actually more like "the right to control of your own data".
You're right that the immediate legal precedents date to data protection laws from the 1990s, but those laws were themselves based on older precedents in many countries concerning things like convicted criminals and concerns about how long such convictions could be used against them after jail time or whatever was served. The whole plot of Les Miserables is based on this controversy -- at that point in French law, released convicts were required to carry around ID papers that branded them as prior criminals, thus making it difficult to get decent employment, etc. In the case of the protagonist of Les Miserables, a tiny act of petty theft threatened to ruin his entire life by reminding everyone he was a convict.
Hence places like France and the UK passed laws that declared convictions for most minor offenses to be "spent" [www.gov.uk] after a certain period of time, i.e., they were not required to be revealed to obtain a job (or other services), even if you are explicitly asked by your employer about convictions, etc.
These laws never deleted information about convictions, but they ensured that such information returned to obscurity after a suitable period of time... so someone would have to put forth extra effort to find it out about someone. In a broad sense, I guess you could still say it was about "data protection," but it was also designed to lessen notoriety and ensure that someone who had been officially deemed "rehabilitated" could resume a normal life.