The highest court in the European Union decided on Tuesday that Google must grant users of its search engine a right to delete links about themselves in some cases, including links to legal records.
The decision by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg is a blow for Google, which has sought to avoid the obligation to remove links when requested by European users of its service.
By ruling that an Internet company like Google must comply with European privacy laws when operating in the European Union — a consumer market of about 550 million people — the court is indicating that such companies must operate in a fundamentally different way than they do in the United States.
Instead of operating as a single around-the-world, around-the-clock forum for other people’s information, Google — and potentially companies like Facebook and probably Twitter — would need in the 28 European Union countries to become more actively involved in refereeing complaints from users about information carried online. The companies would also assume the responsibility and cost for removing that information if requested to do so by national data officials on behalf of people raising complaints.
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Because the European Court of Justice is the highest court in the European Union, Google cannot appeal Tuesday’s decision.
Good. Google is morphed from a search engine into an all-powerful online stalker, and while I’m sure there are drawbacks, it seems at first glance to help reinstate the right to be left alone. I’d invite our legal friends to weigh in on the potential of similar challenges in Canada.
Bwahahahahahaha. The EU privacy laws? Guys. You were fubared long before this issue came up. Over 29,000 words for a law concerning selling cabbages? It would be to laugh,if not so sad.
If most people realized how the tracking industry (yes it’s a massive industry) worked, then Google would be the least of their worries. With so much attention on Google, they’ve been forced to at least put in some privacy controls. It’s the multimillion dollar companies that you will never hear of that should concern you the most.
On every significant website on the Internet, there are 20+ tracking companies watching who comes and who goes. The use their cookies etc to get your ip address and because they track millions of sites, they see 99% of the websites you visit. Have a Facebook site or somewhere’s else you use your real name? Boom, they now have your real name tied to your profile of internet habits. They then know “John Brown’s” interests, political views, employment status (going to a job board site?), relationship status (visiting a dating site?), how many kids you have, your pornographic/sexual interests (tons of trackers on porn sites). They know you better than your friends and family, with their algorithms and web history, they know your deepest secrets.
What do they do with this information? There’s few laws regarding what they do, so they sell it to employers, marketing companies, large brands and of course government can have it anytime they want. Maybe your nosey neighbour will call them up and get your report too for a few bucks. Not sure why you didn’t get that job, maybe it’s because HR knows you have a thing for leather and whips, not because your Excel skills are a little weak. The fact you never hear of another company other than Google and Facebook being pulled out of the dark and put in front of Congress or the Privacy Commissioner, shows how little knowledge of or interest the fed’s have in closing this massive privacy loophole. Not sure why you don’t hear more about it in the news?? Major news sites sell the privilege to track their readers to these data companies themselves, who knows, they might make more money off of tracking you than advertising….
You can block them from knowing everything about you. You can download and use the Epic Browser that will use a proxy service to mask your ip address and block all of the trackers. It even shows you how many trackers are on each site and the names of the companies (most you’ve never heard of) that track you. You can also kick it up a notch and download and use the Tor browser which will run your viewing through several different routes and mask even large government agencies from watching you. It’s your call on how much they will know about you and what buyers will get their hands on.
Google didn’t mind censorship in China. Screw those guys.
I understand that their company motto “Don’t be evil” is now accompanied by maniacal laughter whenever spoken aloud on the Google campus.
I’m of two minds about here. On the one hand, I don’t trust Google at all. On the other hand, the EU is nothing other than Hitler’s “Reich that will last a thousand years” without the marching and the cattle cars.
So I’m going to have to go with praying for an asteroid on this one. Maybe it can hit the NSA as well, being a miracle and all.
It’s all fine and dandy until the politicians use the law to attack people for airing their dirty laundry.
And much later, to erase those people.
A pox on both their houses. The EU is the biggest, most intrusive government bureaucracy in the history of the world …Google is the biggest, most intrusive private sector bureaucracy in the world. I hope they devour each other.
However, that being said I shall now miss the ability to research unbelievable amounts of information about my customers, my prospects/leads, and my competitors. Information is power, and now we all will have less of it.
The traitors who have infested our nations with a human ideological virus called Islam , now want to control the internet.
The laws made by these people are null & void. They broke the civil contract with their citizans years ago.
as for goggle they never meet an alphabet agency they didn’t bow down to.
Besides with all the changes they have made your now not a customer, just another child to control.With them telling you what you can see, or not.
Interacting with Google is entirely voluntary.
Couldn’t agree with you more Kate. Privacy has become a commodity to be exploited for profit without a *shred* of concern for the consequences.
Google, Facebook, etc., all know what they are doing. They all have seedy underbellies which they try hard to keep away from public view.
Once in a while the Europeans do something useful. Such legislation is badly needed in Canada too.
“Interacting with Google is entirely voluntary.”
Yes indeed.
There seems to be a widespread popular notion that we should be free to post whatever we want about ourselves on the web and yet still retain our precious personal privacy.
This is fundamentally counter-intuitive.
Bad decision. On one hand the ruling seems to placate privacy concerns of the ordinary citizen by allowing a mechanism to remove references on the Internet of their one night of debauchery when they were 19 from forever permeating the Internet as it is being sold to us now, but it also opens up the possibility of the corrupt politician/bureaucrat etc hiding his/her misdeeds from the public by just lodging a complaint. Your local candidate for office had multiple drunk driving offences passed off as youthful folly. No problem, just complain to Google or any other search engine hosting links to that information and viola, your local candidate for office is now squeaky clean. What you don’t know can’t hurt you right? Another reason this is a bad ruling is search engines are not going to have the manpower to investigate the validity of each complaint, they will reflexively just remove the link even if that information being linked to is in the public interest, like they do now with the DMCA and copyright complaints. That is what this ruling does and it is being done deliberately to undermine the free flow of information in the public interest. A very chilling effect indeed.
Northernont has a very good point. This is a highly nuanced issue in some respects. Should an individual have the right to require removal of all links that, say, indicate that the person has a criminal conviction? Should an individual have the right to remove all links that indicated membership or affiliation to an outlawed organization?
For matters that are on the public record, I do not think there should automatically be a right of removal. This would not be protecting privacy; this would be hiding established guilt. People should indeed have the right to remove links to rumours, leaks of private conversations, and the like. But not matters of public record.
And in light of the sheer amount of snooping, spying and intrusion into our lives thanks to electronci surveillance, how does everyone now feel about the Snowden revelations? Particularly seeing as the ISPs seem to have become the accomplices of Big Government in collecting information on all of us?
northernont is, I fear, quite right. This is yet another sounds-good proposition, but beyond the first glance it really will be perverted 180 degrees.
“I’m from the government and I am here to help!”
Sure you are …. sure ….
If the people who set up Google had possessed a different character, they wouldn’t have abused their unique power, and they wouldn’t have to deal with this.
Compare them to the old Bell System, which had a similar position to spy on virtually everyone, but didn’t, because it was simply unthinkable to do so.
When the IBM Corp. invented the computer age, they ushered in a huge improvement in productivity and human well being. Now that the IBM generation has been replaced by children who by all appearances are basically nihilists, the value to society of their technology developments is a mixed bag, at best.
Some of you who are arguing this is a bad decision clearly have not read the ruling.
I don’t think the decision went too far, but even if it did, Google, Facebook and others only have themselves to blame. They have as much respect for privacy as Hitler had for the Jews.
This is a victory for the consumer. I am hoping it might eventually lead to paid services, at reasonable prices, where your privacy is guaranteed.
“When the IBM Corp. invented the computer age, they ushered in a huge improvement in productivity and human well being. Now that the IBM generation has been replaced by children who by all appearances are basically nihilists, the value to society of their technology developments is a mixed bag, at best.”
Well said indeed!
No, interacting with Google *isn’t* entirely voluntary. That’s the point. For example, if someone unmasks your username, “JJM”, and connects it to real-life person Jean-Jacques Morin (or whatever), a Google search by your boss could reveal all comments made by “JJM” here on SDA and elsewhere. Potentially even one that your boss doesn’t like very much, and makes him come up with a reason to fire you at your next review. Even though Jean-Jacques Morin may have never touched a Google page in his entire life, and never gave Google consent to store that information.
I think it’s a good ruling that might finally begin to give firms like Google pause in just how much digital information they vacuum up from all over the internet.
“For example, if someone unmasks your username, ‘JJM’, and connects it to real-life person Jean-Jacques Morin (or whatever), a Google search by your boss could reveal all comments made by ‘JJM’ here on SDA and elsewhere. Potentially even one that your boss doesn’t like very much, and makes him come up with a reason to fire you at your next review.”
1. Are you proposing to prevent anyone from searching the web for any information they want?
2. If my “boss” did do such a thing, how would I know anyway?
He would be unlikely to tell me outright that he was firing me “just because” he “knows” I’m “JJM” and didn’t like my comments on SDA.
Besides, this sort of thing isn’t restricted to the web: my boss might not like a letter I wrote to the National Post or something he heard me say at the water cooler. It’s up to ME to control what I put out on the Internet. If I post pictures of me at the beach in Cuba on Facebook that anyone can access when I was supposed to be on company-paid medical rehab in Orillia, I’m simply compromising myself.
There seems to be an idea floating around that Google’s disdain for other people’s privacy is something that can be addressed by a law that provides for after the fact editing by remorseful users.
It won’t work and it is, in itself open to abuse.
If any government actually wants to curb abuse by these web services, then they need to address the root of the problem which is, the mandatory user agreements that require people to give up any claim to privacy in order to use the services.
“The Right to be Forgotten”… it’s got a nice ring to it. Too bad the ruling is complete rubbish. Not only is it a bureaucratic nightmare with too much grey area as to what constitutes outdated information, but it flies in the very face of what is free speech. Here’s an idea of what’s circulating in today’s news – http://www.pressreader.com/profile/Media_Mentions/bookmarks/right_to_be_forgotten – surprising lack of insight, but good information if you’re looking for a place to start your research.