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Google's general counsel has signalled the company intends to fight, hard, against broad interpretations of the European Union's right to be forgotten.
Kent Walker, the company's general counsel and senior veep, put his name to a strongly-worded post on Wednesday, US time. Titled "Defending access to lawful information at Europe's highest court", the post argued that forthcoming cases in the European Court of Justice "represent a serious assault on the public's right to access lawful information."
Walker wrote that French courts' request for a European Court of Justice ruling on personal data collection effectively seeks a regime under which "all mentions of criminality or political affiliation should automatically be purged from search results, without any consideration of public interest."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @10:01AM (19 children)
your right to be forgotten infringes on my right to be wary of repeat offenders, so I will be suspicious by default so all you did is carpet punishing the clean innocent ones.
Anyway, a corporation complaining about injustice is a side effect.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @10:21AM (1 child)
Criminals in Europe just cross into another country with a different language to reoffend. Google is unlikely to be of help identifying these individuals. Aren't open borders great?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @03:19PM
Facts [dailymail.co.uk] win [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aiwarrior on Friday November 17 2017, @12:33PM (13 children)
Thank you for your moderation of disagree. I find it refreshing that here on Soylent when people disagree they have a way to express their dislike without modding to oblivion.
To the answer. So your comment is that privacy is infringing on your right to be suspicious. You are not the purveyor of justice, the state is, for good or bad.
The state carries out justice and deems, with the supposed power of the people and constitution, that a person shall be fulfilling a sentence for a given time period and with appropriate restoration. In my specific country we do not have perpetual crime nor are the criminal records public, so right here and right now, Google is already somehow causing harm.
Also where I live, American levels of criminality are unseen, specifically in Poland. In Portugal, where I was born, the same is true. I think that suspicion creates a bias and triggers unhappiness. Go out and live
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @01:51PM
Wasn't bad before, but I think now is more complete.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday November 17 2017, @04:18PM (4 children)
The thing is someone loses much of their right to privacy when they commit crimes or are a public figure. If you did something heinous and high profile in the past to the point that stories about that still appear high up in search results under your name? Sucks to be you. That's the way it should be.
And these facts can be quite relevant long after the incident. For example, committing the crime of embezzlement remains quite relevant to anyone who hiring said person for a position of considerable financial trust (like accountant), particularly, if the behavior is repeated.
In addition, the level at which this right is being implemented is both irrational and destructive of freedom. It shouldn't be Google's job to filter out lawful websites. If someone wants their information removed from a website, go to the website to get it removed. If the content of that web page is lawful, then sucks to be you. Instead, Google and other search engines operating in Europe are now mandated to implement a substantial amount of machinery of censorship of lawful web pages into its search results. In other words, it is now legal to suppress lawful speech at the search engine level. This will aid future tyranny in Europe.
Further, despite all this talk of the "internet never forgets", it does. It just takes longer.
So what? The right to be forgotten has been observed by the party it applies to, your government.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Friday November 17 2017, @05:54PM (3 children)
When government demands that information must not be searchable, but not unpublishable how is there really any right to be forgotten?
If the right to be forgotten can't be brought up in a court of law to suppress history, how is there any such right?
The logical conclusion is that newspapers must cull their archives, articles must be somehow retroactively unpublished and bells must be un-rung.
And thousands, or millions of people's brains must be manipulated for the benefit on an individual.
Of course none of this applies to government, who are allowed to keep archives and search them forever.
It only applies to public accessible search engines, it really only applies to "members of the public", not to the police or government.
At least for now, that's all it applies to.
How far from officially redacted libraries and archives are we? How far from punishment for merely "knowing"? How long until merely reminding people of past offenses is itself a crime? How long until mere knowledge will be illegal?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:53AM (2 children)
No, they aren't. Criminal records are to be deleted after some time.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @11:54PM (1 child)
That's the claim. The reality always proves otherwise. Just ask the gun owners living around the area the Beltway "Snipers" worked in, and how those "temporary" background check records were used to identify them as owning .223 rifles many years later.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 20 2017, @06:18AM
That's the law.
We are talking about Europe.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday November 17 2017, @06:02PM (4 children)
If Criminal records are not public then they will not be in google's search results.
If something was published in digital form then everything you've stated is a lie. Records are public. Memory is not illegal. If even ONLY the state remembers there is no such thing as the right to be forgotten.
When the serial rapist shows up to take your 14 year old daughter for a trip ti the Mall, I suspect all this nonsense about forgetting goes out the window.
As for levels of criminality, How would you know? Its an easy claim to make, when no records are public.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday November 17 2017, @10:35PM (3 children)
> When the serial rapist shows up to take your 14 year old daughter for a trip ti the Mall, I suspect all this nonsense about forgetting goes out the window.
Think Of The Children (TM), from Frojack ? Wow...
The serial rapist is either in jail, in treatment, or deemed rehabilitated. If a simple Google search allows people to find his past and deny him a job, you've created an outcast who cannot reintegrate society and is more likely to commit crimes again (the serial rapist is the worst possible example, because they have impulses to fail, if they're out before they're too old and have ED).
GP's point was that your "right to know" is an infringement on a suspect or criminal's right to live a normal life after complying with the punishment inflicted on them.
It also hits random people with the same name/age as those criminals, or even worse suspects. You can get your job prospects ruined because a random guy you'll never meet was accused of a heinous crime.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @10:54PM (2 children)
Except that "in treatment" is a canard and "rehabilitated" is s statistically non-existent condition when it comes to sex offenders.
Any clinical psychologist will tell you that sex offenders have a recidivism rate approaching 100%.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @11:01PM
Considering that the definition of "sex offender" can refer to anything from someone who raped a 5 year old to an 18 year old who banged his/her 15 year old lover, I would say that's quite a meaningless term.
Citation needed. I'm only finding numbers in studies ranging from 11%-30%. It depends on how it's measured (arrests, convictions, mere accusations, etc.). But nowhere near 100%, at any rate.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday November 17 2017, @11:01PM
> Any clinical psychologist will tell you that sex offenders have a recidivism rate approaching 100%.
That's not even true in the US, where only rich people get "treatment" rather than being thrown in for-profit jail.
The primary reason why it's not true, is that many people are branded "sex offenders" for stupid reasons, and will neveer commit any real, let over repeat, offense.
That's even less true in countries that have a humane approach to rehabilitation (though I'll grant you that sex offenses are probably the hardest, with petty gang crimes, to pull people away from).
What's a "clinical psychologist" ?
So, really, [citation needed] !
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Saturday November 18 2017, @01:55AM
To say you speak English like a native would be a lie, your command of English is far better than the average native.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @01:34PM
What knowledge of American criminality do you have living in Poland? Approximately none? Out only what you've seen on TV? I heard polacks fuck sheep, and nasty their sisters, it must be true!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 17 2017, @04:36PM (1 child)
A right to be forgotten is really the delusional attempt to pretend that reality is not what it actually is. Pretend that facts are fake. Pretend that actual events did not occur. Pretend that people do not exist. Pretend that certain things were not said.
Wow! The Right To Be Forgotten is actually just a rebranding of The Ministry Of Truth from 1984! That's what Winston did! He helped people, events and speech to be "forgotten".
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dry on Saturday November 18 2017, @06:25AM
Actually it was an easy right to enjoy pre-internet.Had to live in a free country with privacy rights as well as other basic human rights but basically if government records are sealed after a while, unless whatever you did was very infamous, you got lost in the noise.
I did something stupid 40 odd years back, good luck finding out what it was. My government won't tell you. Somewhere there may be a bit of micro-film hiding in a newspapers vault giving a summary, but not easy to find.
This is good, as since then, other then traffic infractions and smoking pot (quasi-legal here), I haven't done anything particularly wrong and why should a mistake I made as a teenager be held against me forever?
Now in countries where freedom was defined as being able to buy people to torture, this idea is bad as their culture depends on rights including the right to segregate people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @05:07PM
I don't think arrest/conviction records should be public at all, and should only be accessible under specific circumstances (i.e. a job relevant to the crime committed). This does not require government-mandated censorship, since the government only has to refuse to divulge details. Speculation would still be possible, but not as reliable.