REMOVE
YOURSELF FROM GOOGLE
Last
month, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the highest court in Europe
in matters of law) made the landmark decision that Google and other search
engines must now remove links to content about people if they request it. This
right to be forgotten ruling Is proving divisive, because although It protects individuals’
privacy, It also means that career criminals, corrupt politicians and other people
with something to hide can effectively edit their pasts.
In
this blog, we frequently provide advice on staying anonymous online,
from using VPN services to disguise your identity and location to tightening up
your Facebook privacy settings.
However,
at the same time, we're opposed
to the idea of internet censorship.In this feature, we look at both sides of
the story, explaining how you can delete all your personal information from
Google and other online services, while looking at why that might not always be
a good thing.
WHY REMOVE YOURSELF FROM GOOGLE?
Q: What is the ‘right to be forgotten’?
A:
There’s a saying that on the internet nothing ever really disappears because
even it you delete it, there’s always a copy to be found somewhere. That copy
is often still available in a search engine cache, particularly the massive
collection of pages indexed by Google. The ‘right to be forgotten’ means a
person can ask for old, inaccurate or irrelevant data to be removed from search
results forever.
Q:
How did this change In the law come about?
A:
A Spanish man named Mario Costeja Gonzalez ran into financial difficulties in
1998 and had to auction off a property he owned to solve his woes. This was
reported by a newspaper, put online, and indexed by Google. Gonzalez disliked
the fact that his money problems from 16 years ago always appeared when he (or
anyone else) Googled his name, so he went to court to request that this 36-word
mention of an unpleasant incident in his past be removed from Google’s search
results, to stop it affecting his reputation. The Luxembourg-based Court of Justice
of the European Union sided with him, ruling that even though the newspaper
acted in the public interest in publishing the piece. Google was infringing his
privacy by continuing to make the information available.
Q:
What does this mean for the rest of us?
A:
In the short term, the decision means that Google must remove all search
results relating to the auction of Mario Costeja Gonzalez’s property. The
ruling will have an immediate impact In Spain, but it will take a while to
spread across other European legal systems. In the long term, it has far-reaching implications and
will allow anyone in Europe to request that information about themselves be
removed from search engine results. Google has now launched a dedicated web
page (bit.ly/googleform347) that lets European citizens fill in a form to
request that links associated with their name be taken down.
Q:
Does the ruling only apply to Europe?
A:
The ruling, which cannot be appealed, will apply to all 28 countries in the
European Union. However, it won’t affect the US market, because of the American
constitutional guarantee of free speech, as set out in the First Amendment. As
a result, there’s now a danger mat Europeans and Americans will see slightly
different versions of the internet.
Q:
Does the new law only affect Google?
A:
No, the ruling actually covers all search engines operating in the European
Union. However, because Google is so dominant - around 90 per cent of searches
in the UK and Europe go through the search giant - Google is the main company
under the spotlight.
Q:
Why would you want to remove yourself from Google?
A:
Although it could be argued that requesting links be removed is essentially
whitewashing’ your personal history, that’s over-simplifying things. If you did
something out of character - for example, ranting at someone on Twitter while
you were drunk, or writing a controversial blog post - you wouldn't want that
to be the first thing potential employers saw when they Googled you. and it would be unfair for you to be
defined purely by one particular moment of madness. We all make mistakes, after
all - that’s why pencils have rubbers on their ends! People change over time,
too, and views you might have held in your youth may well seem very alien to
you now - as if they belonged to a different person.
Q:
Have there been many removal requests
since the ruling?
A:
Yes, the search giant reportedly received 12,000 removal requests on the first
day the ruling came into effect.
High-profile
examples include an ex-politician seeking re-election who was unhappy about an
article regarding his (presumably less than stellar) time in office: a
convicted pedophile who wants links to pages about his Conviction to be wiped:
a company mentioned in a forum discussing consumer rip -offs: a convicted
cyber4talker featured in an article about cyberstalking laws: a university
lecturer who was suspended from his sob; and a man who tried to kill his
family.
Those
are just some of the more headline-worthy requests. There are plenty of other
more mundane examples. So far, there hasn't been a flood of removal
applications, but it is very early days.
Q: What does Google think about this?
A: Obviously, the search giant isn’t happy with the ruling, which it describes as “disappointing”.
Google spokesman Al Vemey said: “The ruling has significant
implications for how we handle take-down requests. This is logistically
complicated not least because of the
many languages involved and the need for careful review.”
In
an interview given to the Financial Times, Google boss Larry Page said the ruling could damage innovation while proving
beneficial to repressive regimes. However, he also pledged that Google would
now try to be “more European”.
Q:
What do others think about the ruling?
A:
Privacy groups obviously welcome the ruling, while anti-censorship
organizations are concerned about the implications. ‘We need to take into
account individuals’ right to privacy, but it search engines are forced to
remove links to legitimate content that is already in the public domain, but
not the content itself, it could
lead to online censorship, points out Javier Ruiz, policy director at the
London-based Open Rights Group (www.openrightsgroup.org).
Talking
to BBC Radio 5 Live, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales called the ruling
astonishing” and one of the most wide-sweeping internet censorship rulings that
lye ever seen He has also went on to describe it as a technologically
incompetent violation of human rights.