

Google ordered to remove links to stories about Google removing links to stories - PretzelFisch
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/08/google-ordered-to-remove-links-to-stories-about-google-removing-links-to-stories/

======
alain94040
The article is misleading and incorrect, possibly written to inflame smart
geeks into noticing a crazy recursive loop.

Those news articles about the right to be forgotten mention some private
people by name, who have exercised their "right to be forgotten." The only
request is that Google doesn't find a hit when someone searches for those
people's names. If your search terms don't include those names, then it's ok
to find those articles. Just not if you are specifically searching for info on
those particular people by name.

It's sad that a journalist would forget to mention the key point. Then people
get justifiably upset, and no one wins.

~~~
nicklaf
In my mind, this only makes the law itself all the more evidently absurd.

~~~
kuschku
Well, the law has one thing in mind: You should be able to stumble upon
knowledge, or if you know where to look, but a future employer, or a neighbor,
etc should not be able to find out about crimes you did when you were a teen.

~~~
kodablah
Using a popular search engine that abides by EU laws is not the only way to
find out about things. Killing the messenger does nothing to the message.

~~~
happyscrappy
You can tell this to Europeans until you are blue in the face but they will
not listen. They think they can impose their censorship on the world.

~~~
x0x0
Yeah, totes weird how Europeans expect companies operating inside Europe to
obey European law.

~~~
happyscrappy
It does no good if you can just use google.com and that will never be censored
but pretend is good enough for them.

~~~
x0x0
it's perfectly reasonable for eu companies to say any google service accessed
from within eu borders shall be so regulated

If google doesn't like it, they are free to stop doing business inside the eu.

~~~
happyscrappy
If Europe is foolish enough to try then Google will dump them, just like
China.

~~~
ionised
That might be for the best.

------
sloanesturz
I understand why the DMCA exists -- so that people can't post your copyrighted
data (that you necessarily own) without your consent.

I understand slander laws -- so that people can't make up stories about you
and present them as facts.

I do not understand the Right to be Forgotten -- if something is true and
public information, why should Google hide the data from its search results?
An article being about you does not mean that the information inside of it
"belongs" to you.

>> "the links relating to a criminal offence that were removed by Google
following a request from the individual concerned."

You can't request the BBC or Telegraph to take down true and legitimate
articles (nor should you), so on what basis does the EU think that they can
order Google to alter their search results?

~~~
_delirium
You can indeed request the BBC or Telegraph to take down articles under
similar circumstances. For example in most European countries you can't
publish a kind of "where are they now?" article that picks a few random '80s
criminal cases, and tracks down the whereabouts of the people 30 years later.
That kind of article, showing that a certain person (mentioned by name) now
works as a web designer in Aarhus, while another person (also mentioned by
name) has moved to Germany and is a welder, etc., would be seen as an invasion
of privacy by gratuitously digging up and publishing this kind of 30-year-old
information without a current public-interest justification.

It doesn't come up often with respectable media outlets, because they have
mostly internalized this norm anyway, and wouldn't run such a story. But I
could imagine a tabloid or daytime TV show doing something like that, if it
were legal.

------
dsfyu404ed
I don't see what the disagreement is.

Somebody (e.g. Billybob) does something stupid that winds up on the local news
sites. 6yr later the court case is long since closed and he wants it behind
him because it was a just a drunken mistake. EU says he has a right to be
forgotten which he exercises. Google deference the news articles from
Billybob's name. Billybob Google's himself and finds a blog about Google
referencing search results that mentions him by name and the nature of the
result. Since it mentions him by name it's a primary result (you Goggle
Billybob and it comes up) and Google should have to remove it per the law.

Obviously this sort of law creates an incentive for background check services
to just crawl every news site imaginable which could create a whole set of
different problems but that's beyond this scope...

I think it'll just take time for society to understand that people do stupid
shit and ignore it as long as it's irrelevant to the context and "forgetting"
events is just a stopgap. Eventually people will realize that racists,
political extremists and people with non-violent felonies can still function
normally from 9 to 5 and this will be a non issue.

This problem has a lot in common on the technical side with dragnet
surveillance and law enforcement. Google needs to determine what is and isn't
relevant when returning results for somebody. Some misdemeanor in highschool
is of dubious relevance 10yr after the fact and if the person apparently has a
lot of results that paint a picture of them having a successful career and
generally having moved on. Google could put that on the 3rd or 4th page, after
all the "people named $name in $state" public records databases, where it's
practically forgotten. Meanwhile the NSA (or whoever) needs to figure out how
to filter out and avoid flagging for followup that sound like flags but are
actually sarcastic, based on inside jokes, or obvious false positives when
considered in context (to avoid wasting their time,wasting our money and
violating people's privacy).

~~~
spinlock
> Obviously this sort of law creates an incentive for background check
> services

Bingo

~~~
notahacker
Still sounds like a boon to the people most likely to send out these requests
to me.

Scenario 1. HR scans resume, types name into Google, finds Github profile and
a couple of headlines in local newspaper about arrest, discards CV

Scenario 2. HR scans resume, types name into Google, finds Github profile and
forwards to dev team. Interview arranged as goes well and offer is made
pending background check. Company pays $30 to agency who confirms grades and
work history and additionally reveals that you were arrested but not charged
for a misdemeanour when you were a teenager

In the second case, there's a pretty good chance the candidate will actually
get the job.

~~~
FilterSweep
This is a great comment, and it actually highlights some additional problems
with it all.

Let's say your name was "Mike Smith." Pretty common name, right? Even if HR
took your Hiring Scenario 1, it will be most likely it will take until the
offer-pending- _official_ -background-check is made. Why? Because "Mike Smith"
brings up hundreds and thousands of results _even with a geolocated search_.
Living in a city of several million is a boon to reformed misdemeanor teen
Mike Smith. That's not even considering the legitimate criminal Mike Smith's
that need to be ignored for our innocent Mike Smith's sake.

Now, if your name was "Quincy Brouwer" (Dutch Surname), its easier for this
arrest to pop up.

The reality of the situation, at least from what I've seen, is that there is a
hybrid of Scenarios 1 & 2 that actually go on. they _will_ do some rudimental
Googling on your name, but it won't be until the offer is about to be made
that they'll do the formal, _paid_ , background check and look into your
credit history and other things.

Unfortunately on the other side of the coin, for developers in particular,
many will go through several rounds of sometimes grueling technical interviews
only to find out a silly mistake they made as a youth disbars them from the
job.

------
robinson7d
Regardless of beliefs on the Right to be Forgotten, this feels wrong.

The way that I had previously interpreted it, a person or entity could ask to
have all references to them removed. The request in this article isn't that,
though - it's a request to cherry-pick, and have subsets removed.

To me, this feels too exploitable. I'm not sure whether I could agree with a
Right to be Forgotten in the first place, but if there were one it should be
all-or-nothing.

\---

 __EDIT __: It appears, per @alain94040 's comment, that this is not entirely
the case, and that the article was not accurate.

The interpretation that @alain94040 explained, which is that Google would
still show the articles in question, just not if the query includes the entity
who requested they be forgotten's name (or is it just not weighted by the
name? If a name's included, but the rest of the query is sufficiently strong,
would it still find the article?) actually seems completely acceptable in the
realm of a Right to be Forgotten.

~~~
ergothus
I think this demonstrates the problems with restricting information (Note: Not
making a moral judgement of any kind, just stating the problem set is HARD)

Information has basically zero copy cost, and can't be removed once given. So
to stop people from knowing, you have to stop them from originally learning.
Except that the ability to learn is "cheap".

The same problems result whether we're preventing the spread of how to build a
bomb, breed a superbug, or remove naked photos. Somewhere in that continuum
will be info that you agree is best not to be spread, but the steps required
to enforce that can be a lot more expansive.

It's hard.

------
hyperpape
I'm surprised no one has discussed an aspect of this decision that I find
particularly troubling: it means that if there is a serious abuse of the right
to be forgotten law, the articles discussing that abuse may be delisted
because they mention the individual involved.

I'm against the law in general, but I have to admit there are cases that I
find innocuous when considered by themselves. If Google has to delist an
article about a private citizen's minor indiscretions, I disagree, but it's
small potatoes. But any law is subject to potential overreach, and to combat
it, we have to be able to discuss it. It seems that this decision works to
censor criticism of the law as well.

As someone will point out, you can criticize the law and be ok by omitting the
relevant facts (is that just the name of the individual involved?) but I think
it is bad to put this requirement on any critical discussion of the law.

~~~
JamesBarney
I think the distinction is that it won't de-index the page for all searches.
It will de-index the page when people search for Johnny DidBad.

Case 1 User searches for "right to be forgotten abuses" he finds a webpage
about how Johnny DidBad did a bad thing and is now abusing the right to be
forgotten law. In this case the right to be forgotten isn't doing anything.

Case 2 User searches for "Johnny DidBad" he won't find the webpage about how
Johnny DidBad did a bad thing and the right to be forgotten abuses.

I'm not saying I agree with the law but I don't think it limits the ability to
discuss the law, and potential abuses of it.

~~~
dragonwriter
If it deindexes it for all searches that involve the user name, then if
someone has heard of a particular abuse with the name, and attempts to search
for "Johnny DidBad right to be forgotten abuses", presumably the results will
be the same as for "right to be forgotten abuses" \-- which might bury the
results they are specific searching for, making accessing information related
to discussions of the law -- which specific cases held up as examples
certainly are -- more difficult.

------
twothamendment
An ACLU article from The Onion comes to mind.

[http://www.theonion.com/article/aclu-defends-nazis-right-
to-...](http://www.theonion.com/article/aclu-defends-nazis-right-to-burn-down-
aclu-headqua-1648)

------
halosghost
I know it's still quite a controversial topic, and I have not yet come down on
whether or not I like the current implementations, but I am a fan of the
notion of a Right to be Forgotten.

At the very least, I like the notion that a person should be able to have some
level of control over what companies are allowed to access about them; the
control over what information may be in the public sphere is a little more
difficult to talk about. E.g., I deeply dislike that most companies operate on
an opt-out system for information collection; I would rather information
collection (particularly anything dealing with personally-identifying
information) to be universally opt-in with some reasonable attempt ( _not_ an
EULA) made to offer the user an informed decision.

Search-engines are tricky because they provide a public service for finding
information but are, themselves, a company that often profits from the
collection of information both in the usership of their service and in the
data they crawl to aid their users in finding content.

My current opinion (which is not yet fully formed) is that it is wrong to
order Google to unlist results; but, on the other hand, it should be
completely legal to order Google to remove what is essentially a dossier that
they have on a particular user (at that user's request).

I am still mulling this whole thing over; but, at the very least, it is
obvious that the issue isn't a simple one.

~~~
bko
I don't see how anything like right to be forgotten can be implemented without
essentially internet censorship.

Does a corrupt politician have a right to be forgotten forgotten? Former
politician? Bank executive? Hedge fund manager? Barbara Streisand? How about
those who donate to political causes? The trend seems to be going the other
way on that one, at least in the US.

What is the criteria and who decides? I can't imagine how such subjectivity
would not be abused.

~~~
Zikes
I believe there should be a framework in place, but that it should be strict
yet accessible. An easy example is someone that is arrested but not convicted
of a crime. Arrests are public information, and very often people assume that
only the guilty are arrested. Combine that with the regular practice of
Googling new hires for every job and someone's life could easily be quite
literally ruined.

~~~
runako
If a community cares about this, it seems more appropriate to address this at
the community level by not publishing arrest records. Far fewer thorny issues
are at stake with that decision that there are in censoring data that has been
public at some point.

~~~
ghaff
Collectively, we've never really seriously dealt with information that was
historically public but which historically also took considerable
effort/interest to access--e.g. it was in a dusty file cabinet in the office
of some town clerk who only worked for a few hours on Tuesday and Thursday.
Furthermore, it took even more effort/interest/even money to link together
such information with other information sources.

While there are, in general, a lot of good reasons for transparency in
society, there are probably good arguments for keeping certain types of
information private now that they're so much easier to access.

------
methodover
If anyone's interested in listening to a lengthy debate on the "Right to be
Forgotten", check this out --

[http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-
debates/item/1...](http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-
debates/item/1252-the-u-s-should-adopt-the-right-to-be-forgotten-online)

It's a fascinating debate, and a really great listen. For me, I was on the
fence at the beginning, but ended up firmly on the side of "No, the 'right to
be forgotten' should not be adopted by the United States" by the end of it.

Edit: Oh hey, I listened to the podcast, but turns out there's a video version
too.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvDzW-2q1ZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvDzW-2q1ZQ)

------
panzagl
There's an author with the same name as me- if I exercise my right to be
forgotten, does that mean he's forgotten too? I can imagine he might not like
that.

~~~
cbr
You can identify specific search results that are about you and ask for them
to be removed. If anything I would expect the author to be in favor of this,
because now more of the remaining results will be about them.

------
mallamanis
Well, they should now ask for this link to also be removed...

------
tracker1
I think in cases like this, especially if it's recursive, the search should
redirect to `//censored.google.eu/?q=...` with a big notice at the top noting
that the results excludes links that were specifically censored by EU law,
with maybe a link to an article, or two about said law at the top of the page.

------
chintan
Not done yet:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+ordered+to+remove+lin...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+ordered+to+remove+links+to+stories+about+Google+removing+links+to+stories&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

------
d--b
I have a feeling that someone is going to order this link removed.

------
lighthawk
I'm all for privacy. It just isn't implementable.

------
teamhappy
Sounds like they google Google at Google.

// You guys had a rough week, huh?

------
m3h
"We need to go deeper."

------
eridal
so now they will need to ask Google to remove links to stories about /(Google
being ordered to remove links about stories about)*/ Google removing links to
stories.

So nice to see the Kleene star in practice!

