European ruling will reignite debate on right to be forgotten
• EU citizens have a right to remove sensitive information from the web, but not the rest of the world after Google appeal
THE LESS POWERFUL YOU ARE, THE MORE LIKELY IT SEEMS THAT A BAD CHOICE WILL BE FOREVER LINKED TO YOUR NAME
GOOGLE ARGUED THE RULING CAN BE USED TO COVER UP REPORTING ON HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
What is the worst thing you ’ ve ever done? And how much would it change your life if you had to state it in every job interview or on every date? How would your pathway through the world be changed if your extramarital affair or high school cheating incident was widely known?
Assuming you’re not a cog in the state-capture machine or a convicted murderer, most of us are not defined by either the worst thing that happened to us or the worst thing we have done. But in the age of “the internet is forever” we may be, especially if that thing were included in any sort of news. There is little that escapes the reach of Google.
Sure, some things — such as my early attempts at building sites on Geocities — are (please, god!) lost forever. And I will be eternally grateful that my teenage and varsity years passed by largely before digital cameras were ubiquitous. Remnants of that might be embarrassing, but a pimply photo or poorly executed attempt at grunge fashion are hardly worth changing my name and moving to Peru over. They are largely without fault (though I blame peer pressure for the ying-yang choker). I’ll come back to this — the concept of fault, not dubious ’90s fashion — in a bit.
On Tuesday, the news broke that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) had ruled in favour of Google on its appeal against the “right to be forgotten” case. In 2015, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique (CNIL), an independent French regulatory body, instructed Google to “delist” on request information from its global search results that contained false or damaging information about a person.
The idea is to suppress or hide information that may be thought sensitive where details are found to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive. This is no niche problem experienced by a handful of people; Google reportedly received more than 840,000 such requests related to 3.3-million web addresses. A BBC report said about 45% of the links in question were delisted. Google implemented geoblocking for European users, but when it refused to comply for searches beyond EU borders, the CNIL fined it €100,000. Google challenged at France’s council of state, which went to the ECJ for clarity and guidance.
On Tuesday, the ECJ found that Google need not apply the right to be forgotten globally, writing “there is no obligation under EU law for a search engine operator who grants a request for dereferencing made by a data subject ... to carry out such a dereferencing on all the versions of its search engine”.
The search giant and its supporters (such as Microsoft and Wikimedia) argue that this can be abused. First, this abuse can happen on the individual level, as when an applicant forges contradictory information in a delisting request to Google. Second, Google argued, the ruling can be used to cover up legitimate reporting on human rights abuses by an authoritarian state. There are things with which we would rather the world didn’t immediately associate us. Monica Lewinsky has argued against the shaming enabled by the internet that comes with infamy, or even being adjacent to infamy. The man she had an affair with was a married president, yes, but she was not committing a crime or breaking marriage vows of her own.
Putting aside for a second the obvious power inequality between them, she was an adult who made a poor decision. And more than 20 years later, it is still the thing for which she is most remembered. With her campaigning against the cycle of shame aside (watch her excellent TED talk on the topic), she is regrettably the poster child for this association game in action.
Arguably, the less famous and powerful you are, the more likely it seems that a bad choice will be forever linked (literally and figuratively) to your name. Family and friends of Penny Sparrow will say she was more than her discriminatory social media rant. And (hold your letters to the editor) I’m not saying what she said was OK or she — or, frankly, any of those who have earned infamy as a result of their racism going viral — shouldn’t face social (perhaps legal) consequences for discriminatory statements and actions.
What I am saying is it’s easy to “hate” in cases such as that as there is clearly a bad guy. I am not sure we would be so keen to say “they had it coming” in talking of someone wrongfully accused and later cleared of a crime. And you might be keener to see the nuance if your name was indelibly stained by association, such as with a corrupt boss, whether or not you have done anything dodgy.
This is not the end of the testing of this principle. In the data age, identity and personal information are more valuable than ever, as any Google search will tell you.