This blog post was originally published on Linkedin.com
It will be an understatement to say that the decision from EU’s Court of Justice, virtually enshrining Right to be Forgotten, and its compliance by Google, has kicked off a firestorm, on both sides of Atlantic.
Americans have a trepidation about this newly minted "right” colliding heads-on with their First Amendment Rights, guaranteeing the Freedom of Speech. They are also apprehensive that this development will potentially impede free flow of information, the life blood of internet. The issue of online privacy is also held in a similar light. Not long ago Eric Schmidt reportedly remarked that online users would have to fight for privacy or they may loose it.
Europeans, on the other hand, have a deeper affinity to the idea of privacy, data or otherwise, and seek to restrict public availability of information about individuals. This right has its historical roots in French Law covering Right of Oblivion.
A professor at Yale summarized these differences as originating from differing perception of Dignity vs. Liberty
Google’s (somewhat hurried) implementation of EU's Court order sparked more reactions. Last week EU gave an extended questionnaire with 26 questions to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, in order to delve deeper into the matter.
Court Records are archived (after a mandated period). Newspapers have their own archives for the business or social needs, that can be accessed with some effort.
Search Engines have not defined any set period for accessing the information once it get into their indexes. The keyword based “relevancy” of their algorithm ensures retrieval of all information held in the repository, regardless of its recency or public needs. The indexed information does not have any attributes to cover “privacy” or “public interest.” The later is usually handled via ad-hoc requests from governments or courts.
Courts are competent to balance individual’s privacy rights against broader public interest. Search Engines should not be expected to walk that thin, fuzzy line.
Note that the EU Court while considering the case deemed that the act of 1990 was old and “no longer relevant.” [emphasis is mine]
Attaching an expiration date will give search algorithms an objective criteria for excluding the information from its results. The information would still be in the index, just not accessible through a casual search.
Search Engines cannot (and should not) adjudicate what that period should be. In the case of a conviction that determination should rest solely with the courts. For example courts could specify an expiration date, before which the information would be freely available (or searchable) in order to serve the public and social interests adequately.
Once that date is over the individual's right of privacy will gain primacy. Courts could do this as part of their sentencing guidelines or through judicial discretion. This will, of course, require amendment of the statues currently on the books.
Once a period is set by the decision of a competent court, it should not be too difficult to attach a META DATA carrying that date to that piece of information. Search engine’s information retrieving algorithm could be tasked to read this META DATA, and to leave the information out from search results if it has gone over its expiration date.
Such a step should ease the technology related burden in removing numerous links and also address the issue of removed links in one domain still accessible in other domains.
Above all, it will free the search engines from the herculean task of dealing with “removal requests” from individuals.
Obviously such a step will not be a silver bullet for all types of “takedown requests” where other information about a user has been proliferated by others on internet. However, once a META DATA on Expiry Date has been created, the original owner of the content would have gained more control on the data. This will make it easy for media sites/SEs to ignore the time-expired result in casual search sessions.
Such a step will serve to ameliorate the Type 1 and Type 3 issues referred to by Peter Fleischer, Google’s Chief Privacy Counsel. The existing laws should be able to adequately handle type 2 problems.
Image courtesy of usamedeniz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
It will be an understatement to say that the decision from EU’s Court of Justice, virtually enshrining Right to be Forgotten, and its compliance by Google, has kicked off a firestorm, on both sides of Atlantic.
Americans have a trepidation about this newly minted "right” colliding heads-on with their First Amendment Rights, guaranteeing the Freedom of Speech. They are also apprehensive that this development will potentially impede free flow of information, the life blood of internet. The issue of online privacy is also held in a similar light. Not long ago Eric Schmidt reportedly remarked that online users would have to fight for privacy or they may loose it.
Europeans, on the other hand, have a deeper affinity to the idea of privacy, data or otherwise, and seek to restrict public availability of information about individuals. This right has its historical roots in French Law covering Right of Oblivion.
A professor at Yale summarized these differences as originating from differing perception of Dignity vs. Liberty
Google’s (somewhat hurried) implementation of EU's Court order sparked more reactions. Last week EU gave an extended questionnaire with 26 questions to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, in order to delve deeper into the matter.
Balancing Public Interest vs. Privacy
Immediately after the Take-down Request form went live, thousands of requests poured in. A review of of these request showed that half of these stem from criminal conviction or past sins. This raises a question about how would Google strike a fair balance between the privacy and public right to know? How long the information about a person should be easily accessible?Court Records are archived (after a mandated period). Newspapers have their own archives for the business or social needs, that can be accessed with some effort.
Search Engines have not defined any set period for accessing the information once it get into their indexes. The keyword based “relevancy” of their algorithm ensures retrieval of all information held in the repository, regardless of its recency or public needs. The indexed information does not have any attributes to cover “privacy” or “public interest.” The later is usually handled via ad-hoc requests from governments or courts.
Courts are competent to balance individual’s privacy rights against broader public interest. Search Engines should not be expected to walk that thin, fuzzy line.
A case for specifying a shelf life
This raises a question should some types of information have expiration dates to preclude those from appearing in search results?Note that the EU Court while considering the case deemed that the act of 1990 was old and “no longer relevant.” [emphasis is mine]
Attaching an expiration date will give search algorithms an objective criteria for excluding the information from its results. The information would still be in the index, just not accessible through a casual search.
Search Engines cannot (and should not) adjudicate what that period should be. In the case of a conviction that determination should rest solely with the courts. For example courts could specify an expiration date, before which the information would be freely available (or searchable) in order to serve the public and social interests adequately.
Once that date is over the individual's right of privacy will gain primacy. Courts could do this as part of their sentencing guidelines or through judicial discretion. This will, of course, require amendment of the statues currently on the books.
…and signaling with META DATA
Once a period is set by the decision of a competent court, it should not be too difficult to attach a META DATA carrying that date to that piece of information. Search engine’s information retrieving algorithm could be tasked to read this META DATA, and to leave the information out from search results if it has gone over its expiration date.
Such a step should ease the technology related burden in removing numerous links and also address the issue of removed links in one domain still accessible in other domains.
Above all, it will free the search engines from the herculean task of dealing with “removal requests” from individuals.
Obviously such a step will not be a silver bullet for all types of “takedown requests” where other information about a user has been proliferated by others on internet. However, once a META DATA on Expiry Date has been created, the original owner of the content would have gained more control on the data. This will make it easy for media sites/SEs to ignore the time-expired result in casual search sessions.
Such a step will serve to ameliorate the Type 1 and Type 3 issues referred to by Peter Fleischer, Google’s Chief Privacy Counsel. The existing laws should be able to adequately handle type 2 problems.
Image courtesy of usamedeniz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
