30 Jul 14 | Europe and Central Asia, European Union, News and features, United Kingdom
The British House of Lords has slammed the recent “right to be forgotten” ruling by the court of justice of the European Union, deeming it “unworkable” and “wrong in principle”.
The Lords’ Home Affairs, Health and Education EU Sub-Committee stated in a report on the ruling, published Wednesday, that: “It ignores the effect on smaller search engines which, unlike Google, may not have the resources to consider individually large numbers of requests for the deletion of links.”
The committee added that: “It is wrong in principle to leave to search engines the task of deciding many thousands of individual cases against criteria as vague as ‘particular reasons, such as the role played by the data subject in public life’. We emphasise again the likelihood that different search engines would come to different and conflicting conclusions on a request for deletion of links.”
The ruling from May this year forces search engines, like Google, to remove links to articles found to be outdated or irrelevant at the request of individuals, even if the information in them is true and factual and without the original source material being altered. Following this, Google introduced a removal form which received some 70,000 requests within two months.
The Lords committee recommends, among other things, that the “government should persevere in their stated intention of ensuring that the Regulation no longer includes any provision on the lines of the Commission’s ‘right to be forgotten'”.
Index on Censorship has repeatedly spoken out against the ruling, stating that it “violates the fundamental principles of freedom of expression“, is “a retrograde move that misunderstands the role and responsibility of search engines and the wider internet” and “a blunt instrument ruling that opens the door for widespread censorship and the whitewashing of the past”.
This article was posted on July 30, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
21 Jul 14 | Campaigns, Statements
To:
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin
Chair, Article 29 Working Party
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
B-1049 BRUSSELS
DG Justice
Dear Ms Falque-Pierrotin,
We are writing to express our deep concern over the effects of the so-called Right to be Forgotten ruling, issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) on May 13, 2014.
Since the ruling was issued, Index on Censorship, an international freedom of expression charity, has consistently and repeatedly expressed reservations about the failure of the judgement to include recommendations for oversight mechanisms and provisions that would ensure freedom of expression and information rights, as well as obligations, are balanced with privacy rights. We are disturbed both by the loose wording of the ruling and by recent comments from European information commissioners that appear to suggest that authorities are making a default presumption that – in the majority of cases – privacy rights trump those of free expression and right to information.
Index is concerned that without the rapid introduction of uniform, Europe-wide guidelines from regulators on the implementation of, and oversight process for, all search engines implementing Right to be Forgotten, the system will lead to swathes of information that should be publicly available being hidden from sight. This includes not just serious journalism but also information about, for example, individuals who use comment lines below articles as a form of harassment.
Index calls on Article 29 as a matter of urgency to:
• issue detailed guidance on the types of information that can be considered “irrelevant” by search engines. Simply asking search engines to have a due regard to information that is “in the public interest” is insufficient guidance;
• detail an appropriate mechanism of oversight to ensure that it is possible for data protection or other relevant national and European authorities to examine any search engines’ decision on a Right to be Forgotten request;
• include an appeals mechanism that allows publishers of content who have had links removed to be able to challenge that decision. Index understands the need to balance privacy rights with rights to information and freedom of expression rights. However, we are concerned that the recent actions of the ECJ and data protection authorities has failed to sufficiently taken into account the latter, and we would urge greater consultation with civil society groups on the implementation of this ruling and in the development of future data protection guidelines to ensure that that these rights are protected.
Yours faithfully,
Jodie Ginsberg
CEO, Index on Censorship
Copies to: European information commissioners
Letters from the Society of Editors:
Letter to Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin on the Right to be Forgotten
Letter to the Prime Minister David Cameron on the Right to be Forgotten
03 Jul 14 | Digital Freedom, Digital Freedom Statements, European Union, News and features, Statements
When Europe’s highest court ruled in May that individuals had a ‘right to be forgotten’ many were quick to hail this as a victory for privacy. ‘Private’ individuals would now be able to ask search engines to remove links to information they considered irrelevant or outmoded. In theory, this sounds appealing. Which one of us would not want to massage the way in which we are represented to the outside world? Certainly, anyone who has had malicious smears spread about them in false articles or embarrassing pictures posted of their teenage exploits, or even criminals whose convictions are spent and have the legal right to rehabilitation. In practice, though, the ruling was far too blunt, far too broad brush, and gave far too much power to the search engines to be effective.
At the time of the ECJ decision, Index warned that the woolly wording of the ruling – its failure to include clear checks and balances, or any form of proper oversight – presented a major risk. Private companies like Google – no matter how broad and noble their advisory board might be on this issue – should not be the final arbiters of what should and should not be available for people to find on the internet. It’s like the government devolving power to librarians to decide what books people can read (based on requests from the public) and then locking those books away. There’s no appeal mechanism, no transparency about how Google and others arrive at decisions about what to remove or not, and very little clarity on what classifies as ‘relevant’. Privacy campaigners argue that the ruling offers a public interest protection element (politicians and celebrities should not be able to request the right to be forgotten, for example), but – again – it is hugely over simplistic to argue that simply by excluding serving politicians and current stars from the request process that the public’s interest will be protected.
We are starting to see some of the (high profile) examples of how the ruling is being applied by Google. The Guardian’s James Ball reported on Wednesday that his newspaper had received an email notification from Google saying six Guardian articles had been scrubbed from search results.
“Three of the articles, dating from 2010, relate to a now-retired Scottish Premier League referee, Dougie McDonald, who was found to have lied about his reasons for granting a penalty in a Celtic v Dundee United match, the backlash to which prompted his resignation,” Ball wrote. “The other disappeared articles are a 2011 piece on French office workers making post-it art, a 2002 piece about a solicitor facing a fraud trial standing for a seat on the Law Society’s ruling body and an index of an entire week of pieces by Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade.”
Similarly, the BBC was told that the link to a 2007 article by the BBC’s Economics Editor, Robert Peston, had also been removed.
Neither The Guardian nor the BBC has any form of appeal against the decision, nor were the organisations told why the decision was made or who requested the removals. You may argue – as some have done – that Google is deliberately selecting these stories (involving well-known journalists with large online followings) as a kind of non-compliant compliance to prove that the ruling is unworkable. Certainly, a fuller picture of the types of request, and much more detailed information about how decisions are arrived at, is essential. You can also point to the fact that it is easy to find the removed articles simply by going to a search engine’s domain outside Europe.
The fact remains that this ruling is deeply problematic, and needs to be challenged on many fronts. We need policymakers to recognise this flabby ruling needs to be tightened up fast with proper checks and balances – clear guidelines on what can and should be removed (not leaving it to Google and others to define their own standards of ‘relevance’), demands for transparency from search engines on who and how they make decisions, and an appeals process. If search engines really believe this is a poor ruling then they should make a clear stand against it by kicking all right to be forgotten requests to data protection authorities to make decisions. The flood of requests that would be driven to these already stretched national organisations might help to focus minds on how to prevent a ruling intended to protect personal privacy from becoming a blanket invitation to censorship.
This article was posted on 3 July 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
03 Jul 14 | Campaigns, Statements
Commenting on the recent articles removed from search engines by Google, Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship, said:
“As Index on Censorship warned when the ruling was delivered last month the ‘right to be forgotten’ is a blunt instrument ruling that opens the door for widespread censorship and the whitewashing of the past.
Private companies like Google should not have been handed the power to make decisions – that lack any kind of transparency and accountability – about what information can and cannot be found on the internet.”
Further information:
Index urges court to rethink ruling on “right to be forgotten” (30 May, 2014)
Are search engines the ultimate arbiters of information? (14 May, 2014)
Index blasts EU court ruling on “right to be forgotten” (13 May, 2014)
