
Google under fire from regulators on EU privacy ruling - fpgeek
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/us-google-eu-privacy-idUSKBN0FT1AZ20140724
======
zmmmmm
This is just the start of the inevitable slippery slope: the initial
censorship doesn't work (and it never can, because information wants to be
free), so they broaden, widen, deepen it. Then since it is still trivial to
circumvent by technical means they add laws to try and restrict technical
circumvention of the censorship. Then as loopholes are found in the laws
against circumvention they have to broaden and deepen those. Soon it is
illegal just to know things, to tell people basic knowledge of how to do
things. And thus the only viable end point is totalitarianism. There's really
no in between - if you want "free speech" at all you have to take all of it or
none of it.

~~~
clickok
I disagree on a couple of points.

Information doesn't want anything. There may be a statistical tendency of
information to propagate, but it seems to me that the only people who want
information to want to be free are those advancing an agenda with a catchy
slogan.

Further, the only viable endpoint is not totalitarianism-- one can argue about
where on the spectrum we stand today, or might be in the future, but in the US
we try to strike a balance. Unless you support being able to use whichever
country's version of Google that permits things like searching for identity
theft, illicit pornography, etc., it seems like we're OK with at least some
restrictions on speech.

Assuming we accept the EU has the authority to pass such a law, then so long
as Google wishes to operate within their jurisdiction, it seems fair that it
abides by the law, vis., "deleting data as requested", not "make data
inaccessible to those who cannot execute a second Google search on how to
subvert the restrictions".

~~~
smsm42
I'm not sure what you mean by "search for identity theft", but once Google
starts accepting requests for banning any content objectionable in any corner
of the world worldwide, a mere picture of a woman with her face not hidden by
a burqa would be "illicit pornography". You'd say it's too much, but we need
to strike a balance between your desires and religious feelings of people in
Sudan, Syria and Iran, don't we? And when you're trying to "strike the
balance" by trampling on rights, the ones who cry the loudest - i.e. fanatics
- will always win, unless there's a strong and impenetrable barrier that they
can not overcome. Like the First Amendment in the US, which, despite all
efforts, is still standing. But Europe doesn't have it, and there bans on
information and suppression of unpopular expression is the norm. This is just
one more example of their descent.

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emiliobumachar
I've said this before, and I'm saying it again:

If EU courts and regulators want to give citizens the right to be forgotten,
they should be doing away with restrictions on name changing.

 _Way_ before ordering a corporation to burn books.

~~~
DanBC
> they should be doing away with restrictions on name changing.

There are very few restrictions on changing your name in England. Is that not
the case for the rest of Europe?

~~~
esbranson
The US adopted the English legal system, and changing your name is easy as
pie. Mexico adopted the French and Spanish legal systems and changing your
name is damn near impossible (from what I hear). I figure that's a feature of
those legal systems (and their associated _legal cultures_ ), not the US and
Mexico.

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jacquesm
That's a very bad title. What the article states is that the EU would like
those users that want to be forgotten to be forgotten from _all_ google
servers, not just from the servers in the EU. So it's not the EU pushing for
the right to be forgotten to be extended to the citizens of all countries.

~~~
Zancarius
> So it's not the EU pushing for the right to be forgotten to be extended to
> the citizens of all countries.

It may be a bad title, probably for the purpose of link baiting, but the
article itself isn't completely wrong assuming the EU desire is ultimately to
gain control over what information is retained for EU citizens. It's possible
this is merely speculation.

Personally, if the EU wishes to extend this limit themselves, then they should
block access to US search engines from within EU member states. That's
entirely within their right to do and it's a whole lot easier than upsetting
everyone else who doesn't want to play by the same rules (and negates the need
for extending treaties and the likes).

At its most extreme, I'm humored a bit by the prospect of what this sort of
precedent would set for future demands made by North Korea.

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tn13
I am not sure why "to be forgotten" is a right in first place. The kind of
thuggery that Steve Jobs did to keep our salaries low should be forgotten by
society few years down the line ?

------
kijin
This is going to be a big problem for multinational corporations like Google
and Microsoft in the coming years. In order to do business in Country X,
they'll have to censor all information that is objectionable to the citizens
of X, even when citizens of other countries are trying to access it.

Google pulled its Chinese version a few years ago, redirecting users to the
Hong Kong version instead. But Google only had a small stake in the Chinese
market when it did that. It can't pull the same trick with the EU. It needs to
sell ads in the EU, and you can't sell ads in a country while openly violating
its laws.

Why doesn't the EU take issue with the fact that, for example, the Internet
Archive probably has copies of every page that EU citizens want censored?
Well, to begin with, few people even know about the Internet Archive. But even
more importantly, the Internet Archive has no presence whatsoever in the EU.
It's a US charity with US servers. So although it will never be able to get
away with hosting content that violates American law, it doesn't need to give
a flying fuck about EU law, Thai law, Russian law, or whatever. Oh, the Saudis
want to censor images of women driving cars? Feel free to arrest our Chairman
if he ever visits Saudi Arabia.

I think this is exactly why keeping the flow of information distributed is so
important to keeping it open. Different countries want to censor different
kinds of information, so the _union_ of censored information is huge, but the
_intersection_ is very small. If we become dependent on a few multinational
corporations to access information, we'll end up suffering the union of every
censorship regime in the world (or at least the union of regimes where those
corporations do business in). But if we keep the flow of information
distributed, only the intersection need be censored.

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Painboss
Can someone explain why the EU is pushing for right to be forgotten so hard?
This type of legislation can only end badly.

~~~
redthrowaway
Because European courts are no more tech-savvy, nor capable of reasoning about
the consequences of their judgements, than American ones.

~~~
jacquesm
What are the specific parts of their reasoning about the consequences that you
find fault with?

I'm actually quite impressed that they're not falling for the non-existent
technological obstacles that have been put in place here to side-step the law,
for a change the EU court actually seems to be on the ball.

~~~
Afforess
Because "The right to be forgotten" is just doublespeak for censorship.
Politicians are using it to hide an unsavory past. Businesses will use it to
cover up past wrongdoings. I'm not just exaggerating, this is already
happening now with the current implementation.

~~~
jacquesm
Of course it isn't. That right applies to _any_ citizen, not just to
politicians, and besides, the newspaper morgues are not so forgetful. Also,
for 'public figures' the standards are different and they probably will be
only very partially successful in this. The Streisand effect will nicely
counteract any attempt to be 'forgotten' for those who are extra deserving of
being remembered.

~~~
bobcostas55
>and besides, the newspaper morgues are not so forgetful

So how can such a double standard possibly be justified? How can google be
forced to delete things from the servers, but newspaper archives can't be
forced to burn their material?

~~~
jacquesm
Newspaper archives do not vacuum up random facts about random citizens, they
don't build mile-long profiles, they store articles about events that were
considered news-worthy by some newsdesk. Automated collation of data and
journalism are not even remotely similar processes.

What I find interesting is how everybody is focusing on Google here, when the
real focus should be not on how this system _could_ be abused but why it
exists and who it could benefit. And that gives a completely different
picture. But it's late here (3 am) and I'm off to bed.

~~~
bobcostas55
Perhaps you haven't seen how the "right to be forgotten" thing is being used
in practice. It's not used to take down "random facts about random citizens".
It's used by public figures in positions of authority to hide their
wrongdoings.

They're not taking down "automated collections of data", they are taking down
links to newspaper articles. The exact same articles that are in the archives.

The focus SHOULD be on how the system IS abused because the costs of the abuse
vastly outsize any potential benefits.

------
fpgeek
I wonder how EU regulators are going to react when, for example, Russian
regulators demand that Google remove all links to "inaccurate" (i.e. not
Russian propaganda) stories about MH17, worldwide.

~~~
jacquesm
It's a fairly natural privacy issue. The EU DPD has some fairly clear rules
about automated gathering of information about people, the rules under which
you are required to honor requests for reports about that data, to update it
if so required and to be deleted at the first request.

Google is side-stepping the reach of the EU by keeping the data on servers
outside of the EU but this goes against the spirit of those laws, it is about
the _citizens_ not about where the data resides.

~~~
fpgeek
Yes, keeping the information available where the EU's jurisdiction doesn't
reach subverts the spirit of the EU's laws, but what alternative is there? By
that standard, even delivering censored results to all EU IP addresses isn't
enough - that's trivially circumvented with a VPN. And if the EU gets to have
the spirit of their laws reach worldwide, then so does every other government.

But that way lies madness. Once Google is done censoring every search result
that any government objects to (including results governments let their
citizens object to), what will be left?

~~~
jacquesm
The alternative is pretty simple: google should honour the requests of EU
citizens to be forgotten by _google_ , not a limited subset of google.

It's like the copyright battles in reverse, only this time the rights holders
are citizens, and it is google playing shell games rather than say allofmp3.

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wzdd
This is blogspam for the Reuters article it links to, which has neither the
inaccurate title nor the speculation (i.e. that blocking based on geo-ip would
not be acceptable).

------
cwyers
What I really wish someone would explain is why the EU seems to be focusing on
Google's indexing of other people's content, rather than the content itself.

------
nitrogen
Why are there so many posts talking about censorship and none talking about
privacy?

~~~
ASneakyFox
Because it's not a privacy issue. Privacy is the red herring. There's already
ways to protect your privacy online. Additionally no one wants online privacy.
People spend long hours making their facebook page

~~~
nitrogen
People make Facebook pages because they _think_ they can control who sees
them. Also, different cultures value privacy more than others, because they
have more experience with the risks of a lack of privacy.

------
syntern
I'm wondering, at what point will the EU demand that Santa Claus shall forget
what he knows about us?

(Referring to the song: "He's making a list, Checking it twice; Gonna find out
who's naughty or nice.")

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tn13
This reminds me of the Indian government regulation for telecom companies.

According to the regulation the range of a telephone tower should end exactly
at the border of the county (taluka) !

------
RichardFord
They had come up with an excuse to use as an opening salvo for censorship, so
they came up with "right to be forgotten".

------
cpa
I understand that HN is on the side of absolute freedom of expression which
entails that if anything has been public once, it has a right to stay to
public till the dawn of times, so I hardly ever comment on these matters. I'm
French, and I definitely do not agree with this opinion.

In 1978, the french government proposed to cross-reference (through
digitalization) many of its databases (birth registry, healthcare, retirement
fund, driver's license…). It encountered a very strong resistance from the
public, mostly because of an news article in one the biggest newspaper (Le
Monde) titled "SAFARI [the name of the project]: the hunt for french citizens"
(la chasse aux français). Needless to say that such a system would have been a
blessing for the German administration during WW2. It was 1978 and WW2 didn't
seem that far away, either your generation or the one of your parents lived
during the war. That's how France ended up with a law (Loi Informatique &
Libertés) that regulates what one can do with databases storing personal
information.

How's that related to the right to be forgotten? Bear with me.

This law (and up to minor differences, the EU directive on the matter), makes
explicit what I consider to be a very smart and important idea: "purpose of
data" (finalité des données). Basically, before you're authorized to store
personal data (like email adresses, names, phone numbers, IP addresses[1]),
you have to state what the purpose of this data is (to who and how is another
matter, but that's not too difficult). Also, data should only be stored for a
specific amount of time. This duration is determined by the purpose of the
data. For example, if you have a database of all the people that used to be
registered to your {nodejs,rails,lisp} newsletter but aren't anymore, you
cannot keep that data for, say, 10 years. 10 years doesn't make sense given
the purpose of your data. Note that if you anonymize the data, you're good to
go. On the other hand, if you have medical data on cutting edge treatment of
cancer, you may want to keep the data for 30 years if you need to contact a
former patient when you discover longterm side-effect of your drug. And in
this case, it's fine.

You may start to see where I'm going. We have basically the same idea in the
right to be forgotten. Yes, it impedes freedom of speech as american people
think of it. Sure. But, you know, in Europe, we have a different freedom of
speech, which also traces back to WW2. I can't go around saying that I hate
black people and that I'm a nazi. I'm gonna be fined/thrown in jail for doing
that. And a vast majority of Europeans do agree with that. Basically
restrictions are nothing that promotes hate/racism and libel (you can't say
that somebody's a serial killer before he's convicted for example.)

And you may think I'm backwards, turning away from the blinding beauty of
technology (right to be forgotten? that's not how the internet works!).
Thinking that Freedom of speech as the US knows it is the way to go everywhere
is universalism, pure and simple. So, please remember that countries and
people have a history.

Yep, the internet doesn't work that way. And I am aware the I can host my
server in some random third world country and get away with mostly whatever I
host. Or I can use a tor hidden service. But that's not the point. 99% of
these cases will be about data hosted by legitimate businesses, which have a
name and address and that will be compelled to remove the data. In my opinion,
the slope isn't that slippery. After all, you'd be hard pressed to consider EU
countries as being way too censorshipy (?) — in general, not just when talking
about Internet.

And yes, law will always be stupid when you pit it against technology. But
unless you advocate total deregulation, it's a matter of how much idiocy you
can accept.

Finally, a thought on jurisdiction: european judges consider that they have
authority if the intended public is european. So yes, google.es, google.co.uk
and such are subject to european law. Wether or not google.com is subject to
EU law has not been tested in court (it probably has, but I can't remember any
specific case), but even in this case, it would be perfectly acceptable (from
the court standpoint) to alter google.com for EU IP addresses and leave it
untouched for other addresses. So, no, nobody's gonna tread your freedom.

Ironically, I don't really have an opinion on Freedom of speech (US vs EU).
But I find that the EU has struck a nice balance when it comes to that.
Knowing that companies must destroy data that has my name attached to it when
it's not relevant anymore is very appealing.

In the end, the US and the EU, in this case, disagree on principle, which are
like axioms. You can't prove me that one is better (in the general framework
of modern civilization, ie, let's say The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, to keep it simple.)

[1] this one is tricky, but this comment is already long enough

~~~
Vik1ng

       But, you know, in Europe, we have a different freedom of speech
    

I would say Europeans in general have a different understanding of freedom. In
the US the concept is usually always you have "the freedom to..." whereas in
Europe there is often something more like "the freedom from...". Yes, I
realize that you can pretty much write every freedom so it becomes the other,
but when you actually think about it and not try to nit pick that's pretty
accurate.

In general I feel like in Europe there is not this holy grail of abolute
freedom like in the US. It's often limited by personal rights, privacy etc.
Americans don't seem to understand that this isn't just the EU on some kind of
acid trip, but that Europeans simly have different values.

~~~
jacquesm
I'd like to see a European country that tries to censor where its citizens can
go, where money determines the outcome of elections and that's not an actual
democracy go out and preach to other countries about how 'free speech' is more
important and therefore its citizens are more free than those of other
countries around it.

Freedom is an absolute in theory only, just about every country in the world
loses out on one or more dimensions of it but somehow the US has the general
idea that it and it alone is somehow the bastion of freedom.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://boingboing.net/2014/07/24/eu-wants-google-to-
extend-r...](http://boingboing.net/2014/07/24/eu-wants-google-to-extend-
ri.html), which points to this.

