Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
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Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#2Note that this case involved a criminal who wished to expunge his conviction from search results.
> ‘The right to be forgotten is meant to apply to information that is no longer relevant but disproportionately impacts a person,’ said Jim Killock, executive director, ‘The Court will have to balance the public’s right to access the historical record, the precise impacts on the person, and the public interest.’
‘The public’s right to access the historical record’ seems to me to be an incredibly Orwellian phrase. It seems to me that there is an absolute right to access factual historical information.
Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#3Note that this case involved a criminal who wished to expunge his conviction from search results. > ‘The right to be forgotten is meant to apply to information that is no longer relevant but disproportionately impacts a person,’ said Jim Killock, executive director, ‘The Court will have to balance the public’s right to access the historical record, the precise impacts on the person, and the public interest.’ ‘The pub…
I think it's mostly the historical record, as decided by the government
Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#4I find this result disgusting.
Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#5Note that this case involved a criminal who wished to expunge his conviction from search results. > ‘The right to be forgotten is meant to apply to information that is no longer relevant but disproportionately impacts a person,’ said Jim Killock, executive director, ‘The Court will have to balance the public’s right to access the historical record, the precise impacts on the person, and the public interest.’ ‘The pub…
While I see your point, here are some counter-examples:
- Someone who was the victim of a high-profile crime, not wishing everyone they come into contact with to know about it
- Someone being stalked/targeted, living on a secret address
- Someone who was wrongfully convicted, later exonorated. Here a mandate to publish corrections would be good enough, but I don't think Google would be happy with that, either...
Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#6I find this result disgusting.
Can you elaborate?
Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#7Note that this case involved a criminal who wished to expunge his conviction from search results. > ‘The right to be forgotten is meant to apply to information that is no longer relevant but disproportionately impacts a person,’ said Jim Killock, executive director, ‘The Court will have to balance the public’s right to access the historical record, the precise impacts on the person, and the public interest.’ ‘The pub…
Some of the factors that come into this include the very nature of criminal sentencing: A judge looks at the facts of the case, aggravating factors, previous convictions and sentencing guidelines, and determines an appropriate sentence.
Then along comes a search engine and doubly punishes someone in what may be a disproportional way; e.g. it's highly unlikely you will come across the convictions of John Smith when you google him, but when you look up someone with a non-common name, it may be the very first search result; disproportionally disadvantaging them for jobs, business and even dating partners.
The issue in this case was Google wanted to be the sole arbiter of what they would remove and what they would leave in, with no oversight from anyone. This would have crippled the GDPR even before it began.
That said, it's early days for the right to be forgotten.
Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#8We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people.
And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice.
I don't know if expunging records is the right thing to do, but it's worth discussing. There's no guarantee that searching a criminal's name will bring up the recent history where they've done their time, shown contrition, and is contributing to society. Instead it'll be the most highly cited -- likely news about their crime.
As a society, we approve of jail being the mechanism to "forgive" a person's crime. As such, isn't it horrible that Google's pagerank will only turn up what they've done wrong in the past? Again, I don't know if expunging the records is the right thing to do (in fact I believe it's wrong), but I do think it's worth debating.
Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#9Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case
#10Once a criminal, always a criminal... even if you get it expunged from your record?