
Europe's top court: people have right to be forgotten on Internet - kevcampb
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/13/eu-google-dataprotection-idUSL6N0NZ23Q20140513
======
mxfh
Judgement and Opinions of Case C‑131/12
[http://curia.europa.eu/juris/documents.jsf?num=C-131/12](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/documents.jsf?num=C-131/12)

Judgement Text:
[http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=152065&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=252458)

~~~
nyrina
What would happen if Britney Spears came along and asked Google and every
other search engine to delete everything about her on the internet?

Even if Google went ahead and deleted every link to every story about her
today, she would have a new million of articles about her tomorrow (Most
likely about the fact that search engines doesn't give any Britney Spears
results anymore)

How does this law affect celebrities? Are they considered in the public eye
and unprotected? Or are they persons, as well?

Can anyone clarify?

Perhaps Britney Spears is a bad example, as she is a US citizen. What about
Till Lindemann, lead vocal of the German Metal band, Rammstein?

~~~
tijs
In this case it's pretty specific to someone wanting libelous information
removed. If the analogue is a print publication having to retract something it
is (almost?) always after a judge has looked at it. If Britney Spears suddenly
considered everything ever said about her libelous she would have a tough time
convincing a judge of that i would say. Just like celebrities usually have a
tougher time getting things retracted now since they are in the public eye
more than Joe Average by default.

~~~
ds9
I didn't see the allegation of libel in this case. The plaintiff's house was
sold at auction and he wanted links to the newspaper listing removed from
Google.

Assuming there is a libel element tho (mentioned above in connection with UK
law), what about the report of the case where libel was found? That's news,
correct?

Well, maybe it's only the libelous statements that must be removed when
liability is found - then the public would have incomplete reports of judicial
actions. Isn't that a public interest weighing against privacy?

~~~
tijs
My local newspapers report of this case mentions that the reason the plaintiff
wanted the references removed was because the auction publicized the fact that
he had debts at the time which was no longer the case. I would guess there are
situations where such facts would be a hindrance in later life when easily
surfaced through Google.

~~~
magicalist
> _I would guess there are situations where such facts would be a hindrance in
> later life when easily surfaced through Google._

Sure, but that is most definitely not libel.

------
buro9
I could and would argue that there are times in which a person should have the
right to not be found.

An example scenario: Alice is a victim of a crime, reports the crime and Bob
is arrested and goes on trial. Bob pleads not guilty and Alice participates in
the trial as a witness. Bob is sentenced, the court record is made. The Daily
News (fictional paper) reports on the court records of the day and has a
reporter who attends the more interesting cases, and mentions Bob's sentence
and gives some of Alice's statements as quotes.

In that scenario, the court record should always be a matter of public record,
a statement of fact. The newspaper certainly has the right to access public
record and to make a news story of the set of facts that are in the public
record.

But, here starts the problems... Alice applies for a job and the employer
Googles her name and comes across the news article. There are many types of
crimes in which the public have great difficulty accepting a victim is a
victim. For example, rape. It isn't too much of a stretch to say that the
culture of victim blaming means that a matter of public record has just had
the effect of defaming Alice.

Alice as a victim is never given the opportunity to move on with her life when
every person that ever searches for her will find the story very quickly. She
has been sentenced too by participating in the justice system, which is an
open book.

The newspaper, just as in this case, will argue this is public record and
cannot be silenced. Sure, I agree... but that doesn't mean that it's in the
victims interest that the information be extraordinarily easy to find.

And Google are a better place in which to attempt to stop the information
being found, given that they (and only 1 or 2 other search engines) cover the
vast majority of searches made about someone.

Alice certainly does have the right to make information that she didn't
explicitly choose to make public and that can cause her harm not be found so
easily, even when that information is a matter of fact and public record.

She has the right to not be found (by that method - Google).

PS: I know a girl experiencing almost _exactly_ that scenario, who cannot get
a news story off of the front page results for her name. This isn't even a
stretch scenario. The local newspaper just hasn't bothered responding to
requests.

~~~
regoldste
You make a good argument about why she has an interest in not being
found/identified with this information. To be sure, there are good reasons why
she would want to distance herself from this event in her life. By the way,
that is the reason that many newspapers (e.g., the NYTimes)have policies
against reporting the names of rape victims, precisely because of the
stigmatic effects on the victim.

But why is her interest in privacy sufficient to create a right protected by
the law? What about the conflicting interests--including existing legal rights
--of others to learn about and to publish that information? What concerns me
the most is the unimaginably fraught task of administrating these rights. The
EU Court suggested a highly problematic standard: data that is "inadequate,
irrelevant, or no longer relevant" must be deleted upon request. Who decides
what is adequate and relevant? Relevant to whom, and for what? Adequate for
what? Is relevance now the standard for what information can exist online? Who
is the arbiter of relevance?

And how is this administered as a technical matter? Does Google delete the
entire article, or just redact the sensitive information? What if there is
other important information in that same article/site/page? Does the public
now lose access to the entire article, which surely contains other useful
information?

This policy seems extremely ill-advised.

~~~
coldtea
> _But why is her interest in privacy sufficient to create a right protected
> by the law? What about the conflicting interests--including existing legal
> rights--of others to learn about and to publish that information?_

Because for thousands of years of civilization, the possibility of not being
constantly publicly reminded of one's past, even if it was a crime he was
found guilty of decades ago or some dumb or embarrasing thing he once said,
was one of the most humane things.

We shouldn't abolish that freedom to be forgotten, just because machines
enables us to abolish it. Technology should be a tool, like in optimistic sci-
fi, not a master, like in dystopias.

~~~
regoldste
I don't deny that the easy availability of mass amounts of information about
people on the internet has serious, troubling privacy implications, has
magnified the importance we ascribe to that information, and has made it more
difficult to escape incidents in our past.

But this isn't a freedom with a long-standing history. Far from representing a
break with history, this tradition--wherein reputations are sticky and
inescapable--is consistent with how human societies lived for thousands of
years. Until relatively recently (~100 years ago), the vast majority of people
lived in the same town for their entire lives, and there was a collective
remembrance of their character. Everybody knew everybody's business, and
preserved it through gossip. At least partly out of necessity, our cultures
evolved significant traditions of society-wide shaming; stealing an apple
could be punished by public shaming in the stocks in the town square. Social
acceptance and even livelihood was based on your character, and the punishment
for even minor moral failures was severe.

I submit that reputations were only escapable in a meaningful way for maybe
the past 75-100 years, when our cultures (at least, industrialized cultures)
became increasingly mobile: people left home to pursue education on the other
side of the country, to begin careers and new lives in new cities without a
trace of their old lives and reputations. This ability to escape your past and
reinvent yourself was a brief aberration. The size of our communities exploded
in the last 15 years as the internet expanded, and it seems not that different
from when we lived in teeny communities and everyone knew our business.

There isn't and never has been a statute of limitations for dumb and
embarrassing things. Whether to create one now is a normative question, and
regardless of how you come down on that, I just don't think you can justify
robust privacy protections--particularly at the expense of transparency--based
on supposed historical respect for privacy.

~~~
coldtea
> _But this isn 't a freedom with a long-standing history. Far from
> representing a break with history, this tradition--wherein reputations are
> sticky and inescapable--is consistent with how human societies lived for
> thousands of years._

I'm not so sure about that. For thousands of years you could go to another
village, city or country and escape your past completely. With technology like
Google this is not possible. And people you didn't know didn't have any way to
know your face, unlike now with photographs and videos available.

OTOH, yes, in some small village your reputation stayed with you. But:

a) That reputation was built on mostly serious stuff people would remember
about you -- perhaps an adultery, that you were a drinker, that your father
was a thief etc. They didn't have a permanent record of every BS you said or
done, e.g stuff you casually said when you were 14 or some misguided act you
did at some obscure place at 23.

b) That reputation was mostly based on heresay. Not hard evidence, like
photos, videos, profiles, etc. It was softer, and much less encompassing. And
people not directly present when you did something, only heard about it from
others, with less important stuff just getting forgotten naturally.

c) People could (and did all the time) change residence to escape an ill
reputation.

------
dasil003
I sincerely think it's a good thing for the courts to look out for
individuals's rights, but they are overestimating the power of the law. A
thing can't be removed from the Internet once published, and forcing Google to
remove it from their index is _at best_ a middling measure that may slightly
limit the exposure of said material.

I wish the court would grant me the right to fly as well, but it's beyond
their power. I guess they just need a few more decades for the judges to die
off and for the new old men to have a better intuitive understanding of the
way the digital world works.

~~~
ghshephard
"forcing Google to remove it from their index is at best a middling measure "

I think you underestimate the power of search engines - simply having
Bing/Google remove a reference to something, will eliminate it from view for
99%+ of the population. It's a _lot_ more than a middling measure.

~~~
dasil003
Does Google have 99%+ marketshare? Will they always?

~~~
mpyne
As long as the set of search engines that _do_ have 99% marketshare are fairly
few and reachable through EU courts in this fashion, then it won't matter what
the market share of #1 is.

------
babarock
A couple of questions pop to mind:

\- Will that affect the work of archive.org and the wayback machine?

\- Is it okay for a politician to "erase" something he/she said 10 years ago?

~~~
mrweasel
The question that pop into my mind is "What about purchase history?"

We run a webshop and sometimes a get customer that demands that we delete all
their information. They are entitled to make that demand, but at the same time
we're required to store the same information for at least two year, in order
to be able to handle returns, and maybe five years due to accounting.

I really do applaud the court for their intentions, but it leaves a lot of
unanswered questions and challenges. In our case we would have to make serious
changes to our ERP/CRM systems, it currently do not allow deletion of data,
because that would be bad for accounting. Also: Can I deny you warrenty
because you requested that I delete all data regarding your purchase and
person?

~~~
cbr
You could send them an email containing a digitally signed receipt. If they
ask for their data to be deleted and then later want to make a return, they
could send you back the email.

~~~
mrweasel
While I do like the idea, that not how your average customer work. Don't get
me wrong, I love our customers, but here's a short list of weird stuff we seen
from them:

* Forget which phone number they used.

* Switch to a email provider and don't transfer emails.

* Delete email 5 seconds after receiving it.

* Enter wrong email address, twice.

* Forget where they live... ?

* Forget order number.

* Give you an order number for a different webshop.

* Call and tell you that you're spamming ( i.e. sending an order confirmation )

Yes, you and I will save an email for two years, the average customer won't.

Still, I'm loving the idea.

------
jerguismi
One quite an important fact is forgotten there, that publishing information is
basically irreversible action. Even if google removed the information from
their search engines, other search engines probably won't. And of course
decentralized solutions to search engines are coming also, where information
can't be removed even theoretically (for example, yacy.de)

~~~
higherpurpose
I think what's more important here is that I'd have to right to ask the
company to delete my info, even if it doesn't completely disappear from the
web. If I ask Facebook to delete my account, then it better delete everything
it has ever collected about me, no questions asked.

Facebook may or may not do that right now (who really knows, when they change
their privacy policy several times a year), and if it does it, it's mainly
because of some recent lawsuits in Europe. It used to be very reluctant to do
so. Some companies, and I think Facebook, too, argue that once you gave them
your data then it's "theirs". That's not right, and they shouldn't be allowed
to act like that.

~~~
Sanddancer
These are two different issues. Yes, Facebook should delete your info when you
request them to. However, I find it more than a bit disturbing that someone
can use the courts to force entities to pull public information that is less
than flattering about them. Would you hold this decision in the same regard if
it were about a CEO that was trying to bury that he was sued in the past?

~~~
ZenPro
You are confusing two separate issues.

Social Networks and Search Engines are not sources of administrative data. A
CEO cannot _bury_ that he was sued as the matter is a public record.

Should he be able to have that information removed from search engines who
provide no context and social media accounts he owned? Absolutely.

~~~
Sanddancer
The biggest issue I have here is one of fundamental honesty and equality in
the legal system. By creating a system where someone with enough money and
lawyers can make their past problems disappear, you only serve to make the
legal playing field more unequal than it already is. Additionally, it starts
creating much bigger questions as to where the line should be drawn. Should
legal search services like LexisNexis also be bound by decisions like this?
Should case records only be available to those that can afford to go to the
courthouse on alternate Tuesdays between the hours of 9 and 10? In the end,
this case only harms the law. The big still have access to the same data they
always did, the small people are shut out again.

~~~
mattmanser
No, the biggest obsession you seem to have from your multiple comments in this
thread is some sort of belief in absolute justice. Without the ability to
forget our past mistakes, we are forever defined by them. You seem to be
begging for that to happen.

You want to destroy someone's life forever. Everyone needs a chance to
rehabilitate, whether or not they were guilty or successfully prosecuted or
not.

Does it matter that this man wants to forget whatever shame this caused him?

I actually find it disgraceful that you have deliberately used his name in two
of your comments. At the time of writing almost 10% of comments in this thread
are from you.

What has happened to you to make you so broken and incapable of forgiveness?

~~~
Sanddancer
My problem is that he's kicking and screaming in the courts, trying to make
the fact that he had a tax dispute go away. Had he said nothing, I doubt
anyone, even in his hometown would have cared all that much about the issue.
Instead, he's chosen to bully people into removing facts about him because
they're no longer convenient to him. Everyone makes mistakes, lord knows I
have, but part of learning from them, and rehabilitation, is admitting that
mistakes do happen, which this man seems incapable of.

I use his name because I'm tired of seeing well-heeled individuals throw their
weight around in the court system. I use his name because he wishes to subvert
public discourse. I use his name because he has chosen to make himself a
public figure with his suit. Why should I respect someone who has chosen to
disrespect the concepts of free speech, of open government, and of a fair
society?

~~~
phillmv
>I use his name because I'm tired of seeing well-heeled individuals throw
their weight around in the court system.

Are you comparing the resources of a single individual against that of
_Google_? Is the guy a billionaire?

>Had he said nothing, I doubt anyone, even in his hometown would have cared
all that much about the issue.

Well, it would've been present for anyone to google. How much faith do you
have in your capacity to defend well page-ranked libellous information against
yourself? Part of rehabilitation is also not being permanently associated with
your mistakes.

------
hartator
Weirdly, I think it's more for politicians to forgot their past mistakes and
their past actions than for the average citizen.

Taking France as an example, a lot of content (An good example will be some
old racist video of our actual primer minister, past corruption of the mayor
of one of major cities, stupid tweets...) is going to be censored and removed
from the internet. And this is going to happen. Don't ever think one minute,
the first thousand of "forgottenness" will be for citizens and not for
politics.

I think that's one of the stupidest backward law ever. Thanks for fucking up
the internet.

~~~
boredlawyer
Nope. Politicians, celebrities aka „public figures“ do not have the same
rights to privacy. (due widely judicially established consensus in human
rights/constitutional „continetal european law“). Therefore private person has
judicially enforceable right for protect his private life to higher extend
than public figures.

More often many European countries would not prohibit public display of
“personal data” such as name, home address etc. Not only concerning all crime
victims and children, but often also court rulings while being public, are
published in such way, that names and other personal data is removed. So when
you’d google a name of a person, public court ruling proclaiming foreclosure
of his property would not appear in the search result, while some blog/news
outlet could. The ruling only reacts to reality of modern day, that
information doesn’t disappear. So while 50 years ago (or as today) the article
about someone’s foreclosure would still be reachable in newspaper archives,
library etc., but not via two seconds by googling. So if the right to privacy
ought to be a real “human right” it needs to be effectively pursuable, so
court seeks an approach when there is no reason to delete the newspaper
article (it’s not fraudulent or slanderous”) but it’s digital trace via search
engine interferes with one’s right to privacy.

I anticipate that EU, or individual countries will react by enacting/changing
laws how to procedurally enforce that newly established right. How and when to
file such request for removal of search result.

------
Karunamon
I am not looking forward to how this will impact discussion forums like the
one we're on. Someone wants to be forgotten, therefore we must remove all
posts someone made and destroy the context for everyone who may come along
afterwards?

Just ick. Ick ick ick. More ill-thought-out "feel good" legislation like the
cookie law.

------
stuki
I guess the takeaway is: Don't operate Big Data companies out of Europe.....
Pack up your bags, apply for YC and move to SV instead...

All harassing publicly famous entities will achieve, is to make obtaining
available information more difficult for regular people. While those with
deeper pockets and better connections, will simply pay niche providers for
deeper searches and indexing.

From a privacy POV, you would WANT this kind of White Hat demonstrations of
where your privacy weak points are. That way, you are aware of them and can
make accommodations. While third party services can spring up to address the
most widespread concerns. Rather than show up for a job interview, and have
the interviewer "know" something about you, that you have no idea is available
to them at all.

------
pekko
The decision rules that it would be Google's responsibility to filter search
results, instead of the responsibility of actual page removing private data.
So you can find the data if you know where to look at, just don't use Google?

~~~
ds9
From the decision:

"... the activity of a search engine consisting in finding information
published or placed on the internet by third parties, indexing it
automatically, storing it temporarily and, finally, making it available to
internet users according to a particular order of preference must be
classified as 'processing of personal data' within the meaning of Article 2(b)
when that information contains personal data and, second, the operator of the
search engine must be regarded as the 'controller' in respect of that
processing, within the meaning of Article 2(d)."

Hopefully replying to requests will be sufficient. Otherwise, even simply the
obligation to _detect_ that there is something the law requires to be removed
will be a new burden on search engines and any similar services.

------
nissehulth
Not just a can of worms, more like a full barrel. Shouldn't the publisher of
the data be the one you turn to in the first place? I hope there is more to
this story than is being told by Reuters.

------
justinpaulson
I am not sure how most countries in the EU handle the press, but without
digging into this too much, it seems like this ruling greatly limits the
freedom of press. What if a scandal is uncovered regarding a political leader
or someone closely related with them? Does that person have the "right" to
kill the right that the free press has to go public with the information? I
really don't think something like this would stand up in the US at all, but
I'm unfamiliar with press laws in most of Europe.

~~~
SEMW
"What do we do when fundamental right X of person A conflicts with fundamental
right Y of person B" is a question courts have been asking and answering for a
very long time. There's a hell of a lot of ECtHR and CJEU case law on how to
balance competing rights. I don't imagine it's any different in the US.

The US may draw the line a little further towards the direction of freedom of
the press and away from privacy etc. than Europe does, but it's not like it's
an unqualified right on either side of the pond.

~~~
magicalist
"I'm sure there's case law that establishes some kind of balance" isn't really
any kind of answer to the GP's questions...

~~~
SEMW
..What would you consider an answer? GP asked what would happen. Answer: a
balancing exercise. If you want some examples (from the UK, as that's where I
live), try Campbell v MGN [2003], or In Re S (A Child) [2005].

From the latter:

" _First, neither article [8 (privacy) nor 10 (freedom of speech)] has as such
precedence over the other. Secondly, where the values under the two articles
are in conflict, an intense focus on the comparative importance of the
specific rights being claimed in the individual case is necessary. Thirdly,
the justifications for interfering with or restricting each right must be
taken into account. Finally, the proportionality test must be applied to
each._ "

If you want my prediction on what'd happen if "a scandal is uncovered
regarding a political leader... [can they stop the press going public using EU
data protection legislation]", I'd say: no. Like, that's not even close to the
borderline. Data protection legislation isn't even relevant to press reporting
current events, anyway - more relevant for a (UK) political leader would be
better off trying to stop a story is defamation law, which is subject to a
whole other set of controls and defences.

------
aerophilic
Question: Assuming for a moment that there _is_ a right to be "forgotten".
Should that right be permanent? I would argue that while it _is_ relevant
during a person's lifetime, it actually would hurt the public good if we made
it permanent. My thought process goes out to say 100 years from now, where
there may be researchers/family members that want to know more. Should they
still be restricted well after I am dead? Thoughts?

~~~
probably_wrong
I don't think there's an answer to that.

Let's take Kafka, for instance. He gave explicit instructions for his work to
be burned after his death. His executor Max Brod ignored this request, and
published them anyway. The result? Both "The Trial" and "The Castle" managed
to see the light. This is a clear case of the public good being richer due to
a non-permanent "right to be forgotten".

But then again, we also have James Joyce. His executor destroyed some personal
letters, but some others survived. Thanks to that, we have some _very_ dirty
letters he sent someone. Reading those doesn't really teaches us anything
about his works, but seriously casts him in a bad (or at least, unflattering)
light[1].

So back to Kafka. There are still unpublished papers that should have been
destroyed, but weren't, but at the same time haven't been published yet[2]. So
what if Kafka's remaining papers cast him in an equally bad light as Joyce? Is
it okay for us to ignore his specific request for those papers to be
destroyed?

I don't really know. I could imagine some kind of experts voting on that (the
same way that we never managed to see Stever Irwin's death video), but it's an
idea with many obvious flaws.

[1]
[http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=32](http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=32)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafka#Unpublished_papers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafka#Unpublished_papers)

~~~
ars
Once someone is dead their right to privacy is significantly diminished.

------
buro9
So how does one go about asking Google to remove a front page search result
about yourself that you do not wish to exist?

Google are famed for having virtually no way of contacting them, does it
require the individual to jump through hoops to do so?

And no, not thinking of myself... but wondering just whether there are
mechanisms available already to those who will now seek to exercise their
right.

~~~
mtrimpe
It will require a judge in the EU who will submit his findings to the legal
representative of Google EU.

If there will be enough of these cases infrastructure for the legal
representative to handle the cases will be put in place; but I didn't see any
requirements for Google to offer a procedure for taking down personal info.

~~~
DasIch
If this is a right you as a citizen have it will probably not require a judge
at all. As this is legal stuff an email probably won't do but if you send them
a letter Google probably has to comply without a judge ordering them to.

~~~
mtrimpe
The wording is very cautious though (under certain provisions, in certain
circumstances, etc.) implying that it very much still is at the court's
discretion.

------
brador
Why didn't he ask the newspaper to remove his information?

Is Google to remove the search results (the link) or just their cache?

~~~
Sanddancer
Mario Costeja González sued both Google and the Newspaper to remove the data,
asking both to completely memory hole that his property was ever put up for
auction. This includes links in the search results.

~~~
ksec
While I agree you should be able to delete something off the internet ( to a
certain degree ). How is putting up something for auction, which is an act of
public disclosure, be a privacy issue?

I am not sure about Spain, but there are plenty of countries in today's world
which have the flat / house selling price listed for the past 10 - 20 years.

------
fixermark
"Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of
diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is]
to be burned unread." ~Franz Kafka

... and I wonder how much of the work of a genius would have been lost forever
if his wishes had been honored.

------
aquadrop
So where this sensitive information starts? If I write on my blog something
like "Today I went to the zoo and saw John Doe talking to giraffes", will John
Doe have the right to force me delete this text?

~~~
seren
If John Doe was supposed to be on a business travel, but was actually at the
zoo with his mistress, it can cause harm.

You should retort that it was John's mistake in the first place to lie and
cheat, and that is not your fault, and that maybe he should be rightfully
punished. However, we are all humans, and no one is perfect.

Very basically the "right to privacy" is the right to make errors and to not
be judged for something you said or did twenty years ago. Let he who is
without sin cast the first stone, etc.

~~~
Sanddancer
At the same time, if one is able to bully people into keeping quiet, it
becomes a lot harder to find patterns of misbehavior, and to avoid persons who
are better worth avoiding. Mr Costeja González had a dispute with a government
agency 25 years ago, most people will not give much notice to that nowadays.
However, his attempts at litigating away his past, in my opinion, reflect a
lot more on his lack of character.

~~~
samastur
I have no idea what kind of character mr. Gonzalez is (and suspect neither do
you), but how about this hypothetical example. Imagine you were wrongly
accused of child abuse 20 years ago. Charges were eventually dropped for lack
of evidence.

Do you really think information like this would have no influence on your life
or that you wouldn't care?

I know far too little about this ruling to have an opinion of its impact, but
I am not a free-speech absolutist because of cases like the above where lives
are unjustly impacted long after publication.

~~~
Sanddancer
Conversely, imagine you were abused several years ago, and the police dropped
the case through incompetence, etc. Would you want information regarding your
abuser to be disappeared because it's inconvenient? Being able to make
information disappear very well could harm vulnerable people if they knew
people in states of power could make uncomfortable facts go away.

~~~
samastur
Of course not, but somebody not me would have no way of telling if the guy
legally innocent really is or not. What it would come down to is his
perception.

It would be very easy for me as a white straight middle class guy to be OK
with "eternal memory" since it is unlikely to do me much harm. However it
doesn't exactly require a huge leap of imagination to think of all sorts of
scenarios or groups of people who can't afford the same attitude.

Hence I am not jumping to condemnation before I learn more.

------
krisgenre
The reason why most applications don't have an undo operation is because it is
something that needs to designed from the ground up. Its really too late for
the Internet to have an undo.

------
ozim
"The company says forcing it to remove such data amounts to censorship."

Don't they see that personal censorship is something good opposed to
government censorship?

~~~
Dwolb
One argument for why this is a bad idea has its roots in politics. Imagine if
a candidate running for office (or any public figure) had the ability to
santitize his search results to remove all 'bad' listings. The public
perception of a candidate or political figure could always be distorted in a
manner that is always favorable to the candidate. Public dissent could
therefore be surpressed.

Note though, I'm not necessarily for or against this bill. It could be very
useful fot private citizens but we should consider how public figures are
effected as well.

~~~
ozim
I think that public figures should not be evaluated by "some things in the
internet" it is easy for opponents to craft "bad" listings. On the other hand
I think public figures have more power to remove such things if they have
connections, lawyers and simply more money than average Joe.

------
cyberneticcook
The biggest issue is that we don't own our data. It's stored in Google,
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.. servers. It should work the other way
around, every individual should keep his own data and provide permissions to
external services and other people to access it. Is there any project looking
into this direction ? How do we reverse this situation ?

~~~
mike_hearn
It's not your data, just because it's about you.

In this case the article in question was published by a newspaper, in fact due
to legal requirement. So the law here is totally messed up. It says the data
must be published, but must not be findable. A farce.

~~~
cyberneticcook
> It's not your data, just because it's about you.

sure, I agree.

In this case I think the mistake was made by the Ministry of Labour and Social
Affairs who didn't understand the consequences of publishing one person's
sensitive information on the internet. In my utopia though, the newspaper
would have asked (and forcefully obtained in this case thanks to the Ministry
authority) permission to Mr Gonzalez to access his sensitive information, only
for the amount of time required by the bidding process.

------
D9u
The NSA, etc, never forgets...

------
beejiu
And they wonder why so many Brits want to leave the EU.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Britain? You mean the country that imprisons people for offensive posts on
social media and arrests people connected to journalists under anti-terror
laws?

~~~
ZenPro
If you are going to be condescending at least stay factual; the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Britain is simply an island.

Can you be specific about which legal cases you are in outrage over?

If you are talking about David Miranda then he was lucky that we treated him
so leniently.

As a former military intelligence operator I wrote a piece on the detention:
[http://urbantimes.co/2013/11/the-david-miranda-detention-
why...](http://urbantimes.co/2013/11/the-david-miranda-detention-why-the-
government-was-right-and-greenwald-was-wrong/)

We were _exceptionally_ lenient and reasonable in our treatment of David
Miranda, regardless of what the general populace think.

He was a foreign national, in possession of UK Top Secret documentation, held
on a non-secure IT system, and he was not a journalist. Why would _anybody_ in
their right mind think we would allow a foreign national to waltz off with our
material is beyond me.

Replace "David Miranda" with "Chinese Hacker" or "North Korean Diplomat" and
ask whether the detention would have been lawful then.

 _“A Chinese computer hacker was arrested with 58,000 TOP SECRET files from
the UK intelligence community. He was spoken to for 9 hours and released
without charge. He is requesting the return of his computer.”_ The UK public
would be up in arms if our police services released that individual back to
his host nation.

You think you get a free pass for being the partner of Glenn Greenwald?

~~~
pessimizer
>and he was not a journalist.

There's not a license (in freer countries) that you have to have to be a
journalist. If someone is acting as a courier between two reporters, or
between a reporter and a source, they're certainly acting as a journalist.

~~~
danohuiginn
There isn't one clear-cut legal definition of a journalist, but it's a topic
that has been extensively hashed out in different jurisdictions and contexts.
In any given situation the argument over who counts as a journalist will
depend on the laws and precedent for that context, almost without regard to
the commonsense meaning of the word.

