Saturday, July 26, 2014

The Consequences of the EU's 'Right to be Forgotten'

By Wendy Bidwell

In 2009, a Spanish man named Costeja González found that Google searching his name pulled up links to legal notices from the 1990's for debts he had since paid. He initiated a legal battle that went on until May of 2014, when the European Court of Justice ruled against Google and in favor of González. This ruling brought about the European Union's "right to be forgotten," for which Google and other search engines must remove data and links about people whenever an individual makes the request.
 
We now have some information about the consequences of the ruling. According toBusiness Insider, "It's exactly like the 'memory holes' in George Orwell's '1984,' in which Big Brother's minions burn information that the government wants people to forget.
 
The article goes on to say, " . . . It is censoring the internet, giving new tools that help the rich and powerful (and ordinary folk) hide negative information about them, and letting criminals make their histories disappear."
 
The author Jim Edwards gives a few examples that will probably make you cringe. For instance, there was a BBC article summarizing why former CEO of Merrill Lynch Stan O'Neal lost his job (even though he "floated out" in a $161.5 golden parachute). Edwards said it was "a rather mild account of O'Neal's incompetence during the period," but Google had to take down the article. Edwards follows with...

Also, Business Insider previously noted that deletion requests were granted for a former politician who wanted to remove links to a news article about his behavior when previously in office — so that he can have a clean slate when running for a new position — and a man who was convicted of possessing child sexual abuse imagery.
This ruling not only infringes upon freedom of the press, but camouflages predators.
 
In another article, Edwards says, "Who benefits? Here's one example of the type of person who might be quite happy to see links to the past erased: There are 20 senior politicians and government officials in Britain who are current under investigation for their alleged links to a ring of child abusers in the 1980s and 1990s."
 
Furthermore, there are logistical problems with erasing old links. For instance, Google has started removing links to 250,000 web pages, but the process is far from perfect. In some cases, information with which no one has a problem is taken down. In other cases, information about an individual with the same name as the individual for which information is being removed gets taken down also.


Finally, some national regulators believe Google isn't taking the 'right to be forgotten' far enough.

Earlier today, Reuters published Europe debates how far to push 'right to be forgotten', in which it says, "Google's approach to date has been to remove links only from European versions of its website, such as Google.de in Germany or Google.co.uk in Britain, meaning they would still appear on Google.com."


We can expect to see EU protection regulators put out regulations this fall, and I anticipate this to be addressed. 'Til then, we will continue to follow this issue, along with the others…

Wendy Bidwell is Director, The Project to Restore America.

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