Google bows to EU privacy ruling • Hacker News Board

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#61

Post by mike_hearn » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:48 PM UTC

Fuxy wrote: post #58

krbbltr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

What about the right of the employer to know who they're about to employ?

If someone claims to be an expert in a certain area which you need but are not yourself an expert in, it would be very useful to be able to search their name and discover that things they wrote about the topic have been discredited. It'd be even more useful if you could find unflattering opinions about them written by their peers: perhaps it avoids a very long and messy employment of someone who will then be difficult to fire, but who doesn't know what they're doing, potentially crippling your business.

The guy you're looking at would probably love to make the criticism of his work unfindable whilst simultaneously leaving behind the bits that make him look good. But why should he have that right? Employers have needs too.

For what it's worth I quite agree that the existing framework for getting things removed from the internet (by going to the source) works well enough, but that's not what the court has now created.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#62

Post by seren » Fri, May 30, 2014, 3:10 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #60

seren wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pers…

I agree the exception for government agency is inconvenient to say the least...

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#63

Post by cbr » Fri, May 30, 2014, 4:55 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #57

cbr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

For my privacy to be protected in this way it doesn't matter what search engine I use, it matters what search engine the people who are trying to look me up use. If I want a fact about me to not come up when people search for my name I would need to remove it from any search engine others might look in. This is a lower barrier than usage, but you're right that at least for now people probably won't bother submitting these to DDG.

Unless someone makes a single form for submitting a removal request to all/most search engines? Though I guess then the search engines could pool together and do some kind of centralized processing of these requests?

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#64

Post by ewillbefull » Fri, May 30, 2014, 4:57 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…

You going to have to come up with a better defense; the "it's just a different culture" and "you wouldn't understand" and "our values are different" does NOT insulate you from criticism. Your 'balance' is poorly reasoned, and should be openly mocked and despised by anyone in western society.

This ruling affects everybody because of its balkanization effect on the Internet. Other than that, I just feel bad for Europeans who throw fundamental human rights away in favor of populism.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#65

Post by chrismcb » Fri, May 30, 2014, 5:25 PM UTC

blazespin wrote: post #15

Oh those poor search engines, making billions of dollars having to have the decency to let private individuals not have to have their lives opened up to casual searches on the internet 24/7. What a tragedy! I for one have NO DESIRE for my children to grow up in a world where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet. I can only pray this sensible law makes it to North America. For tho…

Who decides what is inadequate or irrelevant?

Search engines just index the web. If you have an issue with some stuff on the web, then go after the person hosting it, not the person telling you where it is.

This is akin to shooting the messenger.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#66

Post by dang » Fri, May 30, 2014, 7:04 PM UTC

Tomdarkness wrote: post #32

dang wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a clever trick. Unfortunately, it breaks the referential integrity of the post. I don't think we can allow it as the submission url, for the same reason we don't allow link shorteners. People who are already posting links to Google searches in comments, though, might want to post these instead. For those reading this later, the submitted url was http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...

The only problem is now when you click on the submission link you can't view the article because you need a FT subscription. If you clicked the link that sends you via Google you can view the article due to the FT allowing limited free views via search engines.

Yes—that's why the trick is clever. But this has been the situation for a long time, and much as we're all annoyed by the annoyance, it would clearly be inappropriate to have all paywalled links show up in HN as "google.com". If people want to post links like this in comments, that wouldn't be a big deviation from current practice.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#67

Post by krbbltr » Sat, May 31, 2014, 2:18 AM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #59

krbbltr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Generally, no, I have not. That preachy, self-righteous subset of Americans I was referring to is usually very easy to tell apart from concerned Europeans. Which to be sure I've seen as well, but in much lower quantities.

And to be clear, I don't actually have much of an opinion on whether the immediate consequences of the ECJ ruling will be positive or negative ones for EU citizens. My issue is mainly with the way this topic was and is reported on in some of the US media – lots of fear mongering and misrepresentation of facts by mainstream press and high-profile bloggers alike. It smells like a PR campaign. (The completely unreflected freedom-of-speech-as-a-religion type forum commenter is really just a consequence and an extension of that.)

Larry Page happily confirms that suspicion. From the article:

“I wish we’d been more involved in a real debate . . . in Europe. That’s one of the things we’ve taken from this, that we’re starting the process of really going and talking to people” - Larry Page

Translation: "This whole ordeal made us realize we need to do a lot more lobbying in Europe and pay off more media outlets in non-english language markets, since our propaganda there didn't work nearly as well as we had hoped. Don't worry, we're working on it."

At the core of the ECJ decision – whether you consider it good or bad, or hilarious, or plain stupid – lie important questions about what privacy and human dignity mean in this age and how much of them we're willing to give up. These questions deserve more than being drowned in the overwhelming noise of corporate shills.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#68

Post by Aloisius » Sat, Jun 07, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #26

blazespin wrote: post #15

Oh those poor search engines, making billions of dollars having to have the decency to let private individuals not have to have their lives opened up to casual searches on the internet 24/7. What a tragedy! I for one have NO DESIRE for my children to grow up in a world where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet. I can only pray this sensible law makes it to North America. For tho…

You'll note this is the privacy that Eric Schmidt already enjoys, or at least believes he should enjoy, whether it's using lawyers to get one his many mistresses' blog yanked from the internet [1], or when he tried to get his political donations pulled from google search: Mr. Schmidt, Google’s outspoken chief who will be replaced by Mr. Page on Monday, has made public gaffes when speaking about privacy. Mr. Levy reve…

I don't see why it is Google's responsibility to act as a censor. After all if there is truly a right to be forgotten (which is wonderful news to a great number of criminals and future politicians), you should go after the origin of the information, not the index.