Google bows to EU privacy ruling • Hacker News Board

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#51

Post by seren » Fri, May 30, 2014, 12:27 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #48

seren wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We, the user, are only going to lose some information on "common people", and only the one mindful of their public image, no public figure, on events that probably happened 10 or more years ago. So, yes, it could become harder to find if someone was drunk at their prom night, harder to stalk an ex, but I don't think we are going to lose anything crucial. Basically, we'll be back to pre web 2.0. And I am pretty sure t…

Yeah? Really? And what happens if that common person goes on to later become famous for some reason? Does all the info about their drunk prom night reappear the moment the first newspaper story about them is published? The distinction between someone of public interest and someone who isn't is entirely arbitrary and open to endless debate. What happens when people start disputing that they're famous enough to no long…

> Yeah? Really? And what happens if that common person goes on to later become famous for some reason? Does all the info about their drunk prom night reappear the moment the first newspaper story about them is published?

Let's imagine you have somehow cleaned your past when you were unknown and you are now running for the presidential election. Your past is not going to magically reappear online, but you can expect that some journalist will try to write a bio on you, contacting friends, people you grew up with, etc... And it could happen that your friend Joe would talk about your drunk prom night. So it is back on the public eye, and it won't be removable this time.

Maybe it would have been easier if the information had always been available in the first place, but I am personally willing that some extra effort, both from "data processor" and investigator, would be needed in the sake of the personal data protection of John Doe.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#52

Post by mike_hearn » Fri, May 30, 2014, 12:27 PM UTC

krbbltr wrote: post #45

ewillbefull wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The law isn't about squelching free speech, it's just trying to keep this information from being so easily available. You're just mincing words here. There are profound speech arguments to be made when someone is coerced or threatened for publishing _facts_. It is the same nanny-state crap that Europe invokes when it criminalizes offending people, and they have an army of people like you to jump on their bandwagon.…

You sound bitter. Why do you get so worked up over 'nanny-state crap' that's going on on the other side of the world? Business interests in the EU and don't like to put in the extra effort? Or do you just enjoy that mode of righteous indignation? I find it amusing that – even taking the Google shills out of the picture –, most of the 'debate' around this topic is along the lines of Americans preaching to Europeans ab…

I live in Europe, was born in Britain, and I think this is a bad ruling that makes the EU look like a bad joke.

Laws that can only be enforced by building a massive system of internet censorship akin to China's are indeed "doing it wrong".

Happy now?

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#53

Post by mike_hearn » Fri, May 30, 2014, 12:29 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #37

I actually have what I think is a valid reason to use this. Years ago I created a friendfeed account. I used their Twitter signup button. Now years later I would like to close my friendfeed account to remove that information from the internet. There's nothing particularly bad about it but it's old, useless and I would rather it was deleted. The problem is I can't login into my account as I authorised through Twitter…

If it's really just irrelevant clutter why not ignore it and let Google decide how best to hide it? That's their job, right?

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#54

Post by mike_hearn » Fri, May 30, 2014, 12:52 PM UTC

seren wrote: post #51

mike_hearn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah? Really? And what happens if that common person goes on to later become famous for some reason? Does all the info about their drunk prom night reappear the moment the first newspaper story about them is published? The distinction between someone of public interest and someone who isn't is entirely arbitrary and open to endless debate. What happens when people start disputing that they're famous enough to no long…

> Yeah? Really? And what happens if that common person goes on to later become famous for some reason? Does all the info about their drunk prom night reappear the moment the first newspaper story about them is published? Let's imagine you have somehow cleaned your past when you were unknown and you are now running for the presidential election. Your past is not going to magically reappear online, but you can expect t…

But why do you think the ruling works that way? The justification for suppressing information is that someone isn't in the public interest, the canonical example being a politician that wants to cover up past corruption scandals. Everyone seems to agree that this is a case where data wouldn't get filtered.

But if someone is thinking about becoming a politician, uses their current obscurity to delete the data from a search engine, and then goes on to run in an election, isn't this exactly when we should want to see all that is on the internet about them? So it makes sense that the information would come back.

Your proposed solution to this is that everyone should have to effectively give up modern technology in this case and hope that some journalist, somehow, without any modern tools, finds all the relevant information despite governments helping this person bury it. Why would we give up powerful tools like this? How is that not a Luddite strategy?

I don't see any way this ruling (I hesitate to call it a law because it doesn't seem to be connected to any actual law that anyone knew about) can be applied in any kind of consistent or useful manner. It WILL turn into a giant fight over who is or is not worthy of being censored or not, with lots of people bending over backwards to argue that they aren't really in the public interest. As presumably there are punishments and fines for not censoring enough data, but there's no punishment for censoring too much, this will inevitably hurt not only ordinary everyday people but also democracy itself.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#55

Post by krbbltr » Fri, May 30, 2014, 12:58 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #52

krbbltr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound bitter. Why do you get so worked up over 'nanny-state crap' that's going on on the other side of the world? Business interests in the EU and don't like to put in the extra effort? Or do you just enjoy that mode of righteous indignation? I find it amusing that – even taking the Google shills out of the picture –, most of the 'debate' around this topic is along the lines of Americans preaching to Europeans ab…

I live in Europe, was born in Britain, and I think this is a bad ruling that makes the EU look like a bad joke. Laws that can only be enforced by building a massive system of internet censorship akin to China's are indeed "doing it wrong". Happy now?

You're entitled to your opinion, but a single comment on a US-centric discussion forum does not convince me that it's a majority opinion as far as Europeans go. My observations so far indicate the opposite.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#56

Post by seren » Fri, May 30, 2014, 1:21 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #54

seren wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah? Really? And what happens if that common person goes on to later become famous for some reason? Does all the info about their drunk prom night reappear the moment the first newspaper story about them is published? Let's imagine you have somehow cleaned your past when you were unknown and you are now running for the presidential election. Your past is not going to magically reappear online, but you can expect t…

But why do you think the ruling works that way? The justification for suppressing information is that someone isn't in the public interest, the canonical example being a politician that wants to cover up past corruption scandals. Everyone seems to agree that this is a case where data wouldn't get filtered. But if someone is thinking about becoming a politician, uses their current obscurity to delete the data from a s…

Overall, I think it is more dangerous for democracy, if everyone is indexed in a database with their political opinions, religious affiliation, favorite ice-cream flavor, than missing out a few bad apples.

I agree it will cause issues, and create complex cases, but I think it is worth trying. And if it does not work out, it will be canceled or obsolete in 10 or 20 years. It is not such a big deal.

More on UE Data laws : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#57

Post by microtonal » Fri, May 30, 2014, 1:37 PM UTC

cbr wrote: post #35

microtonal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it is a hard balance to get right. But privacy is an important right and we should not throw it away because it creates some extra effort for a multi-billion dollar company. I also find it weak that Page plays the 'think of the startups' card. In fact, I think that since the Snowden leaks, there are far more opportunities to create privacy-aware or privacy-protecting services. E.g., I am pretty sure that Duckdu…

DuckDuckGo certainly has benefited from privacy becoming more salient, but this ruling is probably negative for them. Each of these removal requests needs manual review to keep people from requesting takedowns of other people's stuff. There are ~500M people eligible to request takedowns under the ruling, and if 1% of them ask for one link removed per year that's 14k requests per day. If each request takes 5min then y…

There are ~500M people eligible to request takedowns under the ruling, and if 1% of them ask for one link removed per year that's 14k requests per day. If each request takes 5min then you need 143 people working full time. Which high but doable for Google, but at ~20 employees this would be an enormous burden for DDG.

You are making a mistake in your math here, since a sizeable portion of that 500M people use Google, but probably only a fraction of a percent uses DDG.

In other words, if DDG's usage is currently 1% that of Google (which would surprise me), that's 1.43 people. If you are a search company of 20 people, it seems reasonable to me to have at least a few people working on keeping your index clean.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#58

Post by Fuxy » Fri, May 30, 2014, 1:54 PM UTC

krbbltr wrote: post #55

mike_hearn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Europe, was born in Britain, and I think this is a bad ruling that makes the EU look like a bad joke. Laws that can only be enforced by building a massive system of internet censorship akin to China's are indeed "doing it wrong". Happy now?

You're entitled to your opinion, but a single comment on a US-centric discussion forum does not convince me that it's a majority opinion as far as Europeans go. My observations so far indicate the opposite.

As a European myself the request of the citizen for the removal of the content was legitimate you can't have past problems looming over you your entire life and certain things are just too personal and shouldn't be so easy to find to begin with.

I don't want a potential google search to reveal I got my home repossessed for instance.

The employer could take advantage of this by offering you a lower wage since you're desperate it's more likely you will take it or not hire you at all.

However the way the court choose to handle this was completely wrong. This shouldn't be handled at search engine level but at the publishing website level.

The ability of anybody requesting content to be removed from the internet should be very limited in the types of things they can have removed and rigorously monitored by a court of law.

Plus there should be a private database containing the Names of the people who had content removed and what was removed.

That would discourage political reasons since the log of their activity exists even if the content doesn't.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#59

Post by mike_hearn » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:41 PM UTC

krbbltr wrote: post #55

mike_hearn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Europe, was born in Britain, and I think this is a bad ruling that makes the EU look like a bad joke. Laws that can only be enforced by building a massive system of internet censorship akin to China's are indeed "doing it wrong". Happy now?

You're entitled to your opinion, but a single comment on a US-centric discussion forum does not convince me that it's a majority opinion as far as Europeans go. My observations so far indicate the opposite.

But haven't you just been assuming that anyone who is against this ruling is American?

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#60

Post by mike_hearn » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:43 PM UTC

seren wrote: post #56

mike_hearn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do you think the ruling works that way? The justification for suppressing information is that someone isn't in the public interest, the canonical example being a politician that wants to cover up past corruption scandals. Everyone seems to agree that this is a case where data wouldn't get filtered. But if someone is thinking about becoming a politician, uses their current obscurity to delete the data from a s…

Overall, I think it is more dangerous for democracy, if everyone is indexed in a database with their political opinions, religious affiliation, favorite ice-cream flavor, than missing out a few bad apples. I agree it will cause issues, and create complex cases, but I think it is worth trying. And if it does not work out, it will be canceled or obsolete in 10 or 20 years. It is not such a big deal. More on UE Data law…

But you're going to be indexed in such a database whether you like it or not because several European countries are already busy building such databases via their intelligence agencies, and the ones that can't afford it have all been striking deals with the ones that can to get access to it.

This "right to be forgotten" conveniently does not seem to apply to governments, only search engines. So from a democratic perspective it's lose/lose.