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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: 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The logical conclusion is that newspapers must cull their archives, articles must be somehow retroactively unpublished and bells must be un-rung.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.