
How Google determined our right to be forgotten - IBM
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/18/the-right-be-forgotten-google-search
======
nl
_Publishers, too, have a case to answer. Was La Vanguardia entirely in the
right to republish its entire archive, or was it careless?_

It's interesting that is the only piece of discussion in that whole multipage
article about how the information ended up in public in the first place.

I guess it's a better story to blame faceless machines and algorithms than for
a newspaper to blame another lazy, thoughtless newspaper publisher?

I think there _are_ issues around how Google deals with exposure of personal
information (think deliberate trolling campaigns). But this is a weak story
that provides no insight into what future issues of privacy will look like.

~~~
eterm
Are you really trying to attack a newspaper for digitizing its archives?

That isn't a "lazy, thoughtless" action.

~~~
cbr
Newspapers digitizing their archives is great; it's their rejection of the
initial removal request that should have been challenged. Removing things from
indexes makes much less sense than removing them at their source.

Disclaimer: I work for Google as an engineer on open source software.

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emiliobumachar
"The first removal was made public not by Google, with a clear breakdown of
what was being delisted and why, but by prominent journalists reacting to
alarming emails sent to their webmasters headed “Notice of removal from Google
search”."

I wonder if the author would really see it as benign if Google had published a
complete breakdown of what was being delisted and why, instead of just
emailing the content hosts. I think it would put Google at risk of being found
in contempt of the court...

~~~
munificent
> I think it would put Google at risk of being found in contempt of the
> court...

I'm not a lawyer and don't speak for Google, but my understanding is that the
regulation prevents you from telling anyone except the relevant parties when a
link has been delisted. I think "relevant party" includes who the link is
about and the webmaster that owns the link itself.

It would kind of defeat the "right to be forgotten" if Google were to loudly
publish a report saying, "Hey, everybody! Forget that Fred Smith did XYZ on
this date!"

The reason we know that some things were delisted was because the relevant
parties were themselves journalists who then chose to publicize the fact.

So, yes, if Google publicized all delistings, they would violate the
legislation. This is something the author of the article certainly knows, so
decrying Google for not doing it is disingenuous at best.

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lrem
Interesting, while reading the article (right from the title) I had an
expectation of a strong argument against how Google handles things. No such a
thing came, other than the lack of transparency. Is that a sign that whatever
Google is doing is actually working, or just a writing failure?

~~~
infinity0
Lack of transparency is itself a problem, because it means when things fuck up
in the future there's less ability to recover.

~~~
munificent
How could Google be transparent here?

The whole point of the legislation is to stop publicizing information. Google
can't exactly publicly tell the world about everyone they've been told to stop
publicly telling the world about, can they?

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pnathan
The idea of 'right to be forgotten' is... ignorant. It is simple to create a
web spider (yes, yes, it gets more complicated quickly), and you can be
operating your spider quite quietly and privately. The logical outcome is that
there will be grey market databank sellers of 'unforgettable' indexes of
information.

~~~
mattmanser
I would suggest that you're ignorant of the issue.

It's not the information existing that's the problem.

It's that the most powerful search robot in the world, with little context,
can tell other people severely out-dated information about you that people
treat as canonical fact, long after the information was pertinent or relevant,
and that can define an entire person's online identity. And it may never fade
away, or drop down the rankings, because the computer is too stupid to realize
that a house foreclosure notice for 10 years ago is not an appropriate thing
to show.

~~~
Oletros
> It's that the most powerful search robot in the world,

So, other search robots doesn't do that?

------
tdkl
I thought this was harmless, when I found out that there are numerous 3rd
party websites who scrape data in social networks, newsgroups, even app
reviews. This shifts the control outside your hands. Remember when there's a
story about how you can't remove data from a service provider ? It doesn't
matter if Google/Twitter/Facebook/others support removing my data and public
posts, it means that I have to hunt down other parties to do the same, as they
don't update their data and no one knows that app review I wrote is 3 years
old and the account doesn't even exist anymore.

That's also why I'm done with the Internet and real name policies.

------
amirmc
I think this is a great article that covers quite a lot of topics. It reminded
me that we're already aware in real life of the importance of being able to
'expunge' or seal certain forms of records (e.g in law or financial
judgements, I believe), yet we've gotten away without such things for the data
that ends up online about us. This will matter even more as devices etc become
connected to the Internet and it's worth having such debates now.

It's also worth remembering that the entities that index, store, and present
this data to us have their own motives for doing so. We should not be so quick
to assign some kind of hallowed status upon them.

~~~
ademarre
But what of the entities that publish this information online in the first
place? Why are the newspapers not accountable?

------
jkot
Long time ago there was post on HN from guy who was harassed online. Someone
pretended to be him and created fake blog, twitter account, social profiles
etc.. It had serious impact on his life / job / family.

Every other company removed this fake profiles within days (twitter, facebook,
yahooo...). Only Google did not bothered to answer for weeks. Last time I
checked he was trying to shutdown blog on some copyright technicality.

Perhaps this law would not be necessary, if google would cooperate as other
companies.

~~~
Klathmon
Now when you say removed the profiles, do you mean removed links to it, or
removed the actual profile.

I think twitter should have a requirement to remove a false account
impersonating me, but i think Google (or any other search engine) shouldn't be
required to remove references to that profile.

Requiring search engines to remove references to "offending" material seems
like forcing libraries to hide certain books because they are illegal.

~~~
jkot
I meant to remove offending profile, not just links. Impersonation with
malicious intent is probably crime in most countries.

------
fromtheoutside
Wording like "taken every opportunity to passively promote its role as a
“truth” engine" makes me suspicious. How do you promote something "passively"?

If the EU wants to delist results worldwide they have to reach for a worldwide
law. Work together with other bodies of law, the UN or whoever. But why'd EU
law rule worldwide? Oh, right, we're rich.

~~~
emiliobumachar
The article's comparison to copyright takedowns was a very good point.

~~~
fpgeek
It is a superficially appealing point, but I think the analogy falls apart on
closer inspection.

Unlike the "right to be forgotten", a lot of effort has been put into
harmonizing copyright law worldwide. While the mechanics of the takedown
process may vary from country to country, if the content at the end of a link
is infringing in country A, it is probably infringing in country B (with some
limited exceptions like historical differences in went into the public
domain). Given that, there's a serious rationale for applying copyright
takedowns worldwide that isn't Google uncritically applying US law worldwide.

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prof_hobart
I always find it amusing when the Streisand Effect kicks in. Before his case,
I suspect that a vanishingly small number of people were aware of González's
foreclosure. These days it makes its way to news articles across the world and
a Wikipedia article.

~~~
saalweachter
This goes back to the "careless newspapers" comment someone else made: why do
articles feel the need to keep naming the plaintiff? How does knowing the name
of the guy and his past financial troubles improve my understanding of the
situation over, say, referring to him as "a Spanish citizen..."?

It's kind of a dick move. It's not necessary to publish his name and you have
reason to believe he doesn't want his name publicized like this so the only
reason I can see for publishing his name constantly is a weird sort of
professional-caste vendetta against him by newspapers, since his beef was also
with them.

~~~
bobcostas55
This guy single-handedly created a brand new and widely abused way for
governments to censor the internet. And your reaction is to feel sorry for
him? Anyone with the slightest respect for free speech and freedom of
expression should have a vendetta against him.

Fuck him.

------
spinlock
This reminds me of a recent survey where more people claimed to use facebook
than the internet.

It also makes me think of an alternate reality where Hitler burned the card
catalog and left the books alone.

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xyzzy123
Sometimes, it's easier to just change your name.

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codecondo
"This is an excellent article." \- the comment section on this (Guardian)
website is hilarious.

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rdxm
Sorry, but who can take The Guardian, and by extension the NYT seriously while
they are sitting on a bunch of the Snowden material? Whining about Google when
you are withholding the stuff on privacy that __really __matters due to a lack
of moral courage is weak-sauce...

~~~
amelius
Perhaps it is better to judge an article by its contents only.

~~~
rdxm
Privacy is a much larger topic than Google. The point I am making is that it's
a bit past disingenuous to hold forth on a topic when you are not an honest
broker in the overall topic itself..

Find the down votes interesting though...heh...

~~~
mkr-hn
A hypocrite can still be right.

