Sunday Times 2
Could the ‘right to be forgotten’ be extended worldwide?
Google is under fresh pressure from the European Union to expand its controversial ‘right to be forgotten’ tool.
The service, which is currently only available in Europe, removes links to websites with content that is ‘inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant’.
EU data protection watchdogs want to make the service global to prevent the law from being circumvented when a legitimate request is made.
‘From the legal and technical analysis we are doing, they should include the “.com”,’ said Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, the head of France’s privacy watchdog.
Earlier this year, the foundation which operates Wikipedia described the rule as 'unforgivable censorship'. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (pictured) said the public had the 'right to remember (Reuters)
A Google spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘We haven’t yet seen the Article 29 Working Party’s guidelines, but we will study them carefully when they’re published.’
The company previously said search results should be removed only from its European versions since Google automatically redirects people to the local versions of its search engine.
However, a link is provided at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen allowing the users to switch to the international .com version.
The data watchdogs said this ‘cannot be considered a sufficient means to guarantee the rights’ of citizens living in the union’s 28 member countries.
So far the search engine has received more than 174,000 requests concerning more than 602,000 links. The company claims it has removed 41.5 per cent of these links.
Examples include a series of MailOnline articles detailing issues ranging from drug abuse to incest, murder and spying.
For instance, MailOnline received a request to remove a May 2009 article describing the sordid captivity in which Josef Fritzl kept his family.
The piece was based on extracts from the book ‘The Crimes of Josef Fritzl: Uncovering the Truth’. Publisher Harper Collins told MailOnline at the time it did not know who sent the request
Other MailOnline stories removed from Google results include claims from April 2013 that a ten-year-old girl could have died if her parents had relied on the NHS 111 helpline.
More recently, Google removed a MailOnline story about a teenager, Kyle Ivison, slapped with an Asbo for committing 40 per cent of the offences in his town.
The issue of how farto push the ‘right to be forgotten’ has divided experts and privacy regulators.
Some argue that Google’s current approach waters down the effectiveness of the ruling, given how easy it is to switch between different national versions.
Yesterday’s decision was another setback for Google, which is facing multiple investigations into its privacy policy and is mired in a four-year EU anti-trust inquiry.
The ruling has pitted privacy advocates against free speech campaigners, who say allowing people to ask search engines to remove information would lead to a whitewashing of the past.
MailOnline publisher Martin Clarke has described the move by the search engine as ‘the equivalent of going into libraries and burning books you don’t like’.
Ms Pierrotin said that notifying publishers and media outlets when their stories are de-listed from search results would not be mandatory, as Google has previously argued.
‘There is no legal basis for routine transmission from Google or any other search engine to the editors. It may in some cases be necessary, but not as a routine and not as an obligation,’ she said.
Google’s decision to notify press outlets and webmasters via email was criticised by regulators earlier this year for sometimes bringing people’s names back into the open.
Last year, the foundation which operates Wikipedia described the rule as ‘unforgivable censorship’.
Speaking at the announcement of the Wikimedia Foundation’s first-ever transparency report in London, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the public had the ‘right to remember’.
‘We are on a path to secret, online sanitation of truthful information,’ said Geoff Brigham, general counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation.
‘No matter how well it may be intended, it is compromising human rights, the freedom of expression and access to information, and we cannot forget that.
‘So we have to expose it and we have to reject this kind of censorship.’
© Daily Mail, London
| HOW DOES GOOGLE’S ‘RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN’ WORK? How do you request to remove a link? |