Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case • Hacker News Board

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#341

Post by barsonme » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 1:18 AM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #118

emiliobumachar wrote: post #36

Meanwhile, when governments want to check the background of someone before hiring them into a position of trust involved in national security, they'll send agents to investigate. Methods include interviewing them hooked up to a polygraph, and asking their neighbors questions face to face. All for reasons that seem to me less important then the safety of my child while alone with a babysitter.

Because a dodgy spy can cause more damage kim philby lead to the deaths of a large number of people. And its more likely that a family member is a danger to you child - than say a babysitter who got busted at 15 for smoking pot behind the bleachers with her bf.

> And its more likely that a family member is a danger to you child

"X is worse than Y, therefore you shouldn't worry about Y" is a fallacy.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#342

Post by paulddraper » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

tomkarlo wrote: post #323

equalunique wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What will probably happen is that companies will move the background check step ahead of the interview step. The cost of doing interviews to screen candidates is much lower than background checks. Why would a company want to do that step first?

How much does an outsourced background check? Running an interview pool on someone using a bunch of skilled employees costs probably $4K or so. Figure 7 interviews, 3 hrs each (prep, interview, feedback, hiring meeting) plus someone to arrange the onsite. If those are $150K employees, the fully-loaded cost of 20 hrs of work is going to be over $4K.

Interview prep for one candidate is 10 minutes, plus 20 minutes for postinterview discussion.

Subjecting someone to 17 hours of interviews borders on the inhumane.

Plus, interviews are done iteratively; you don't run the whole process for every candidate.

Moreover, background checks are the least likely to actually disqualify candidates, so they are always done last.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#343

Post by paulddraper » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #322

paxys wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, essentially "we're not blocking any content, just blocking any means for you to find it".

As I understand it, Google only blocks this stuff for searches from the EU. So all you need is a VPN with a non-EU IP address, and you can find whatever. Right?

For now.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#344

Post by falcolas » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #306

fastball wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right to be forgotten can apply to anything where a private business has my data. Case-in-point: Facebook. Most people don't believe that when you ask a company like Facebook or Google to delete your account, they actually delete your data. Sure, you no longer have access to it, definitely, but most people seem to assume that it's not entirely gone. RTBF ensures that companies whom you provided information to delete…

Or if I'm, say, a convicted con artist I can hide that fact from my future victims, making any future crimes significantly easier...

Or if I'm, say, a lesbian activist I can request the doxxing of my activities be hidden, so that I may live without persecution.

Or I'm a, 18 year old caught in a Romeo & Juliet, with my face plastered across Facebook as a "sex offender", but it's later overturned (or, as I call it, sanity prevailed). Should I have a right to be forgotten?

Or... the list of possibilities continues.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#345

Post by notatoad » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 2:56 AM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #173

> Explaining the decisions made on Friday, the judge said one of the men had continued to "mislead the public" while the other had "shown remorse". Okay, great, so Google's now required to judge right to be forgotten requests based on whether the criminal has "shown remorse." Yeah, that's not arbitrary or even a little impossible to do at scale. Let's grant that there are good cases for removing pages from a search i…

This is the most ridiculous part of the whole "right to be forgotten" situation. The courts have completely abdicated their responsibility to control the process, instead forcing google (and apparently only google) to act as a court.

If the right to be forgotten is an important right that Eu courts want to enforce, they should actually enforce it. Not just tell google to get it right.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#346

Post by droidist2 » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 3:02 AM UTC

andymal wrote: post #310

wahnfrieden wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googling someone is a longer process than an in-person interview?

Googling someone is not even close to as effective as paying for real background check services, which can be very costly and take days or weeks. For example, how can you be sure that your new employee didn't change their name after committing a crime? How do you know if the John Smith applying to your open position is the same one as the murderer in some article? Google searching isn't good enough for these cases or…

Do professional background checkers use the same public sources more exhaustively or do they have special access to private databases and other sources?

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#347

Post by karmajunkie » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 3:23 AM UTC

openasocket wrote: post #340

contravariant wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entirely clear to me that there's no defamation going on. Does running an add linking to the article for anyone interested in that person's name count as defamation? And if so, why would it be different if google chose included it prominently amongst the search results? I'm not entirely convinced that this should count as defamation, but there is room for debate.

Information has to be false for it to be defamation, it's in the definition. The news article they are trying to de-list does not contain false information.

It doesn't have to be false for it to be defamatory. It has to be intended to ruin someone's reputation in an unwarranted manner.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#348

Post by darpa_escapee » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 3:44 AM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #93

cavanasm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is getting murder or rape convictions removed from the record. This is considerably smaller scale stuff, and the story itself mentions that two men jointly fought to have news of their conviction removed, one who got 6 months in jail, and one who got 4 years, both non violent white collar type offenses, and only the guy who got 6 months actually won. The second guy lost.

Yes, treatment should be always the same - the records stay. Two things though - many thigs that are considered a crime shouldn't be a crime, and second, if the crime is minor or irrelevant, the record won't hurt the person, otherwise it's a proof that it's not as irrelevant as you think. For example in my country, you will get even parking offenses (repeated, but still) written in your record. It hurts nobody becaus…

> if the crime is minor or irrelevant, the record won't hurt the person, otherwise it's a proof that it's not as irrelevant as you think

Let me tell you a little thing called marijuana possession charges and how they make students ineligible for student aid and government loans/grants. Even getting charged with possession of a single joint is enough to bar a student from receiving aid or loans. Such charges or convictions are the reason employers turn people away all of the time.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#349

Post by mattsfrey » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 3:51 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #94

This is kind of a trend I've been noticing, where Europe will try to fix a valid technological problem, but pick the most problematic or poorly implemented solution to do it. It's not clear to me what the difference is between a government censoring someone directly and a government making it impossible for anyone to find a piece of information. Right to Be Forgotten only works if it becomes prohibitively expensive f…

The problem with this is they ask you up front on your application for most jobs whether you have been convicted of a crime. If the answer is yes, generally your application is thrown in the trash. If you lie and they catch you, they have grounds to reject you.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#350

Post by huntie » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 4:38 AM UTC

merb wrote: post #289

wumpus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one big difference, and it's Orwellian -- courts and politicians are claiming that removing something from a search engine isn't censorship.

well even if it is not. it's just so easy to just search another engine. it actually got easier to identify people who wanted to hide stuff.

What other engine? As far as I know there are only a handful of search engines. Everyone else gets their data from these engines. Google, Bing, the French one. Probably one or two more.