

It’s Not as Simple as Asking to ‘Be Forgotten’ by Google - JumpCrisscross
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/its-not-as-simple-as-asking-to-be-forgotten-by-google.html?referrer=

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hamiltonkibbe
Under this "right to be forgotten" If I were a politician, would I be able to
get all the articles and blog posts about my
embezzlement/swindling/corruption/what-have-you conviction removed from major
search engines before an election?

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wmf
No, because it doesn't apply to politicians.

Also, you can't use RtbF to remove all your slippery-slope arguments from the
Internet either.

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batmansbelt
Is there a link to this non-politician clause? Are all public figures covered?
Only the unwashed masses should have a right to privacy.

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throwaway7767
I'm not german, so I can't easily find a link in german law for you, but in
general privacy law in most of europe provides substantially weaker
protections for "public persons", which includes politicians and celebrities.

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timdierks
Can anyone explain a rational and practical way to achieve the worldview the
European courts are looking to impose? Regardless of whether one thinks one
should have the right to be forgotten (or whatever one thinks that means), I
don't see any path here which actually accomplishes anything other than
constraining businesses large enough to care about EU regulators and allowing
all other players to do whatever.

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x1798DE
While I think that endorsing the right to "be forgotten" is indeed quixotic
and a dubious endeavor in general, for practical purposes enforcing these
provisions against the biggest actors is probably enough for most practical
purposes. Probably most of the people searching for your name are doing so on
Google, Yahoo or Bing, and even then they probably aren't going to be going
more than a few pages of results deep. If I had been accused of doing
something horrible 10 years ago, I'd probably be pretty upset if googling my
name returned news articles about that on the first page, much less so if they
showed up on the 20th page, and basically unconcerned if they only showed up
on a Thai clone of baidu.

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Consultant32452
If I'm searching for someone, perhaps someone I'm starting a romantic
relationship with, that horrible thing you were accused of 10 years ago is
exactly the type of data I'm looking for.

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wmf
Then you need to dig into the "deep Web" and not just use Google. But most
people do not benefit from that information so they won't see it in a Google
search.

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Consultant32452
Nearly every single woman I know google searches their dates to check for
domestic violence or other problematic charges.

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stonogo
I always wondered why my dates play with their phones, then run. I figured
they had unplanned server outages to deal with. Your theory is much simpler
than "every woman on the east coast is an on-call systems administrator."

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kenko
"Coye Cheshire, an associate professor at the University of California,
Berkeley School of Information, thinks part of the solution might be for
people to take responsibility for tracking public data about themselves."

The perennial solution in the new neoliberal world: general, pervasive problem
that affects everyone systematically? Take responsibility for yourself and
damn everyone else!

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kenko
Oh, his followup is equally daft: "“I don’t believe that, in many cases,
people ‘lost’ any control over their information at all, because they never
really had any real control even before the Internet existed,” Mr. Cheshire
said. “We often conflate privacy through obscurity with inaccessibility,
control or security.”"

You used to be able to find out certain information (if for some reason it had
been reported on) in records offices or, like, on microfiche at your library
... therefore pervasive data-gathering on everyone in a more or less instantly
accessible way hasn't changed anything materially.

Moreover, conclusion "so you never had control anyway" is only one of several
possible results here; another is "so there was a problem all along which,
since it's now exacerbated, we should really fix".

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comrade1
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the ruling this article
writes about is related to the 'right to be forgotten' law passed recently.

I happen to agree with the right to be forgotten - I should be able to have my
information removed from Facebook, etc.

I also sort-of agree with this legal ruling. After you've served for your
crime you should have the ability to start over. Europe more sees prison as
rehabilitation while the u.s. more seems to want to punish people for life
(e.g., not allowing felons to vote, buy guns, etc)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track_legislation#The_Ri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track_legislation#The_Right_to_be_Forgotten_.28European_Union.29)

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happyscrappy
If you want the actual search results use a VPN so it looks like you are in
the states. It's not like it's hard to get around this kind of thing.

