European law around the “right to be forgotten” is pretty zany to start with. The idea is that people should be able to petition to have annoying, inconvenient, or possibly misleading information taken down off the Internet — or, in many cases, removed from search engines like Google.
For example, X is convicted of a crime, which is covered by the news media, and those articles get linked to by Google. Later, the conviction is overturned. That may generate less linkage than the original arrest, trial, and conviction — such things usually do. Now X discovers that when people Google their name, the top results are the trial and conviction, not the overturning. So X sues to have Google “forget” about the trial and conviction, remove the links to those articles, so that we can pretend it never happened. The information is “outdated” or “irrelevant,” so X should be able to ask to take it down.
That’s a relatively straightforward case, but the one that Google just lost is even dodgier. The judge basically ruled that, sure, the conviction happened, but it was a while ago, and it isn’t likely to happen again, and that the plaintiff has shown remorse … so those Internet links to news articles about the conviction should be taken down, too.
Explaining his decision, the judge said … NT2 had shown remorse. He also took into account the submission that NT2’s conviction did not concern actions taken by him in relation to “consumers, customers or investors”, but rather in relation to the invasion of privacy of third parties. “There is not [a] plausible suggestion … that there is a risk that this wrongdoing will be repeated by the claimant. The information is of scant if any apparent relevance to any business activities that he seems likely to engage in,” the judge added.
He said his key conclusion in relation to NT2’s claim was that “the crime and punishment information has become out of date, irrelevant and of no sufficient legitimate interest to users of Google search to justify its continued availability”.
It’s not that what happened was legally revised. Google just has to censor the record to pretend it never happened. Even though it did.
This is not just more dangerous (letting the government decide what picture of historical reality is in the best interests of society and individuals, because how could that possibly ever be abused), but the judge’s guidelines in the ruling are so vague and subjective, that I don’t see how Google (or anyone else) could possibly replicate them.
I understand Europeans’ focus on privacy (at least from business and other citizens; not so much from their governments), but it really strikes me that what’s being put forward here is not privacy, but something Orwellian.
Google loses landmark ‘right to be forgotten’ case | Technology | The Guardian
Wait: a guy who was convicted of invading the privacy of third parties is suing for privacy, and won because he's sorry? This is not how any of this is supposed to work.
At the root of the larger issue is whether the penalties for crimes at any level should be eternal. On one side, we have the puritanical argument that anyone who has ever committed any crime is now and forever shall be labeled a criminal, and Google, et al., are the holders of the iron that brands the scarlet letter; on the other side, we have the radical revisionist notion that done is done, and that those who have committed a crime should be absolved of it upon completing the sentence that we've agreed represents their repayment to society.
There wasn't much to say about this before because old record-keeping methods and technologies were slow, non-integrated, and difficult to both search and propagate. All that changed with the internet and the eternal unforgetting.
There's the additional reasonable question of whether this records management scheme should be overseen by private, for-profit organizations or by governments, although the latter has the theoretical advantage of uniformity of application through the process of law – at least on a per-state basis.
An example of corporate control of facts of record:
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/QePJi7Ry7y8
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/QePJi7Ry7y8
+Michael Verona I disagree that the datum "X was convicted of crime Y and served time for it Z years ago" is in fact a punishment of X. That's not speaking as a puritan, but as an historian.
This isn't even a matter of Google being the "controller of a fact of record," but being the means of access to them. In theory, the Oshkosh Gazette still has that news story, but if I can't see it without going through Google (without knowing that the Gazette is where I might find it, and assuming the Gazette is not ordered by the court to take the information down, or that the Gazette doesn't rely on Google as their own internal search engine), then the fact of record is lost.
Further, the slippery slope this creates — facts about the past can be eliminated if they are no longer considered by a government official (a judge, a legislator, an executive) to be relevant or of legitimate interest to the public should be obvious. Even in enlightened Western democracies, I don't trust the government to act with consistency and with the true best interests of the people at heart ("Huh, I used to be able to find that link to that accusation that Donald Trump at a baby back in 1978, but it doesn't come up in Google any more — weird").