[okfn-discuss] Right to be forgotten ruling

Andrew Gray andrew at generalist.org.uk
Wed May 21 21:17:19 UTC 2014


On 20 May 2014 07:22, Tony Bowden <tony.bowden at gmail.com> wrote:

>> If it's been released into the public sphere it should stay there.
>
> Many countries already have laws that recognise a value in allowing
> information to decay — e.g. expunged records or spent convictions
> under Rehabilitation of Offenders laws. There are certainly
> interesting technical challenges to achieving things like this in
> practice, but that doesn't mean that the underlying goal isn't a
> worthwhile one.

Applying hard and fast "it's public so it's public forever" rules
sound great until you start looking at the fuzzy edges ;-).

Things like the rehabilitation laws are a very good example of this -
certainly in the UK, it boils down to "yes, it's still technically
public, and you can tell people about it, but you can't force them to
disclose it and you can't make a big fuss about it if you're motivated
by malice". Lots of nuance there without ever saying "it's secret
now".

But, of course, it relies on an analogue age when you wouldn't know
about this without actively going out and looking for it. Privacy
through inertia and obscurity. Our concepts of privacy have been built
up around this idea of things that are "public" but only in the
proverbial dusty filing cabinet, and we're still having to get used to
the idea that things which were previously obscure are obscure no
longer, without ever having technically changed the way in which
they're "public". This is simply the most recent manifestation of it.

On which note...

I've just seen a set of notes on this ruling from the UK Information
Commissioner's Office, the body responsible for (inter alia)
overseeing data protection & the security of personal information, and
will be one of the people to who challenged cases get referred:

http://iconewsblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/four-things-weve-learned-from-the-eu-google-judgment/

A key note to bear in mind:

"There are some who are seeking to draw out much wider implications of
the judgment for freedom of expression in general.  It is important to
keep the implications in proportion and recognise that there is no
absolute right to have links removed. Also, the original publication
and the search engine are considered separately: the public record of
a newspaper may not be deleted even if the link to it from a search
website is removed."

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk



More information about the okfn-discuss mailing list