The European law gives individuals and institutions the right to demand that search engines such as Google must de-list postings containing ‘outdated’ or ‘irrelevant’ information. The Euro authorities insist that this cannot be construed as censorship, since the material will not actually be removed from the internet – it will simply not be linked to by Google and Co anymore. When plans for these regulations were first announced in 2012, the European Commission’s vice-president said: ‘It is clear that the right to be forgotten cannot amount to a right of the total erasure of history.’ That sounds like rewriting history. If material is not listed by search engines, it is effectively invisible to most online and ceases to exist as public information.
No, no, say the authorities, of course we are not banning this controversial book! We are simply ordering all libraries and bookshops to remove it from their shelves and websites forthwith. You will still be at liberty to read it – if you can find a copy anywhere, or even spot a reference to its existence…
Er. No, it isn’t remotely clear at all. There’s either a “right to be forgotten” or there isn’t one.
What the Commissioner* meant was, “We’re obviously Good People, so we can’t do Bad Things. Stands to reason, yeah?”
*There are several Vice-Presidents of the Commission at any one time, and the article doesn’t say which it was. One acts as first among equals though (the “First Vice-President”) and in 2012 that was Baroness Ashton. I can well believe she’d say something as dimwitted as that.
More apt?
“No, no, say the authorities, of course we are not banning this controversial book! We are simply ordering all libraries to remove it from their catalogs.”
Since this seems to be a gray area, I guess I should comment on it. Does The Don have the right to have his comments expunged so no-one can bring up any of his past comments about women? He’d love to be able to do that! But would it be the best thing, for us public, to not know these things about him? Wouldn’t Putin love to be able to delete all references to his past in the KGB? Not just in Russia, but everywhere? Whilst I do love my privacy, I accept that when I venture into public spaces, I leave a record.
We might all need to think that way.
It may become impossible to find data via search engines, but I’m sure that every European government will have its own way of remembering everything forever. And thus those in power will be able to release embarrassing facts about their opponents, while the reverse will be impossible.
SBS in Astraya has just started showing a series on National Socialist Germany compiled by an American Army Intelligence officer who fled Austria after Anschluss who went about Germany interviewing Germans to try and understand the mindset that allowed Hitler to take over. The same mindset is happening now with politicians spearheading great causes that are irrational but the press support. In Germany it was wise to speak through a tulip when referring to the National Socialists. The E.U. is a Fascist/Marxist organisation to it’s boot straps. Will the British plebiscite to abandon the E.U. go ahead, who knows but the E.U. needs the British market. Maybe the northern European League will be revived.
Of course it is censorship – it is trying to whitewash evil people (by hiding their past words and deeds).
Of course in an American context no such censorship is needed – as Google (and other search engines) have a systematic bias towards the left.
The idea that that they just use neutral mathematical models is a myth.
For example, searches of John Kerry in relation to Vietnam are unlikely to show that he lied, on oath and in uniform, before Congress – thus giving aid-and-comfort to the enemy in time of war (and went on to help the enemy at conferences in Paris).
Just as they are unlikely to show that John Kerry used to pretend to be Irish – talking about how his grandfather was greeted by signs in 1920s Boston saying “no Irish need apply”.
John Kerry used to dine-out on this story – as it supposedly showed how his family has suffered from discrimination.
Two problems.
There were no such signs – Irish Americans dominated Boston (if anything it was “English Americans” who were persecuted – see the “Curley Effect” named after Mayor Curley).
And John Kerry’s grandfather was not Irish anyway – he was Austrian (he changed his name to “Kerry” to fit in).
Google (and so on) is, basically, little better than Wikipedia.
The left may not control it totally – but they have massive influence over it.
The ‘right to be forgotten’ has been used by, to my own knowledge, one convicted fraudster who notified Google that he wished links to references to his recent fraud conviction (still unspent) to be removed, which they did, although we are told that this would not be the use of this service, but he was found out via a search of his local newspaper’s website.
Intriguingly, Google did make a reference obliquely to some search results for the convict’s name having been removed, but did not say why. That of itself was enough to show that he had been up to something.
It is really a long war on truth, like the Rehabilitation of Offenders legislation, the author of the first Act boasted that it gave the right to lie force of law.
Data Protection legislation is similarly sinister, with a right to have data about you held by another erased or corrected.
@pst314: “thus those in power will be able to release embarrassing facts about their opponents, while the reverse will be impossible.”
Which is precisely the point, reason, objective, and aim of this whole business.
We need to start our own search engine.
I disagree with Mick Hume about this part:
Google’s statement is not empty at all. I think it is meaningful that Google are saying they will do no more than the law requires, and that they are taking advantage of international boundaries.
If an article is irrelevant, won’t the Google search algorithm “disappear” it anyway, or at least push it way to the bottom? Or do authorities want the power to declare a posting irrelevant, just because they find it embarrassing?
Rob Fisher is right – we do need “our own search engine”. Ideally one that would also highlight every bit of information that the EU asks Google to forget.
80% of Europe is run by eloi and populated by eloi. They are pathetic.
The USA is very different JGIII, the number there is 79.9% eloi apparently and the rest are paramilitary police morlocks, which much better I’m sure.
“Internet Governance”, forsooth!
There isn’t any way to get away from these humorless bastards, is there?
Q. Why did the politician cross the road?
A. Because all politicians are really chickens, and that’s what chickens do!
Paul Marks August 11, 2015 at 8:25 am:
Wikipedia at least has mechanisms for correcting errors. Google (by design) transmits information with absolutely no checks. And its design is such that once an item starts showing up in searches, it will copied and linked to, propagating further. This is good for truth, but bad for error.
There are perfectly decent people out there whose lives have been ravaged by deceptive search engine results.
And with “search engine optimization” becoming a real process, bad actors can target this against people they want to hurt.
I don’t know that the EU measure proposed is an effective answer, but it does address a real problem.
“Paramilitary police”.
Few, if any, of the recent cases of disputed police shootings in the United States have been by officers in “paramilitary” gear or carrying “paramilitary” equipment.
For example Officer Wilson (who was viciously attacked by the drugged up violent criminal Michael Brown) was in normal police uniform and carrying a standard pistol.
There are two reasons I attack this “paramilitary police attacking innocent people” stuff.
Firstly because, by and large, it is not true (there are cases where it actually is true – but they are rare) and the campaign of agitprop should be opposed – opposed on principle.
But also the recent Obama-media propaganda campaign against the police (helped along by some libertarians) has had terrible consequences.
The police had pulled back in many cities – know that there is a propaganda (an agitprop) campaign against them.
This has led to a rise in crime in such cities as New York.
Most of the dead victims of this rise in crime have been BLACK.
Yes the “black lives matter” Marxist agitprop campaign has led to more (not less) black people being killed.
Not that the people who are behind the campaign really care about that.
To them people (of any race) are just cannon fodder anyway.
All that matters to them (to the people really behind the campaign) is to discredit the “defenders of the capitalists” (such as the police) so that the towns may be looted and burned.
Supposedly a wonderful “new society” will rise on the ashes of the old.
P.S. to my libertarian friends.
If you really think the media campaign against “para military police” (“black lives matter” and so on) would allow people to use firearms to protect their stores from being looted and burned, you are sadly mistaken.
The police are not the only target of the campaign – they are not even the real primary target of the campaign.
The real target of the campaign is business owners.
As so often libertarians are being USED by the left.
There is no shame in this – the left are just a lot more cynical and ruthless than most libertarians.
Rich Rostrum – sadly you are mistaken.
Wikipedia (or rather the people who dominate it – the hive-mind of leftist writers) regards the ability to “cite” from an establishment source (such as the New York Times – which has been backing collectivism for the most of the last century) as far more important than whether something is true or false.
Also there is the tone of articles and what is left out (and what is included) – as well as whether a specific “fact” is true or false.
“Anyone can edit it” is true – as long as one remembers what is also true.
“Anyone can edit Wikipedia, but if your edit does not meet with approval for the leftist hive-mind it will not tend to last long”.
As for what you say about search engines.
Actually there is human input into search engines such as Google.
As I said, the idea that it is pure mathematics is a myth.
Although, yes, the left are past masters at manipulating the mathematical side – not just the human side (in order to get a search to go their way).
This is how the left came to dominate the internet in the first place – for they did not always dominate it.
I can remember (back in the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s) when the internet was a series of boards (on various subjects) and libertarians did very well on those boards.
Then various people popped up (seemingly from nowhere) and started asking questions.
Do “you people” really believe that Mr Hitler was a socialist (and so on).
These questioners were not interested in our reasons for believing the things we argued – they were just interested in noting down our “reactionary” beliefs and reporting back.
Then the “hive mind” (the left really do seem to operate as a hive mind – basically because “the left” are those people who went to school and university and actually believed the historical and political doctrines that are taught in such places) struck.
Vast numbers of people appearing on the internet saying the same things (often in the same words) and ridiculing (rather than arguing against) anyone who opposed them.
Perry de H. knows this method from Gamergate – the leftist takeover of all the gamer press, with different publications saying the same things (often in the same words) – praising leftist games, and attacking reactionary games.
True there were organisations of leftists – such as “Move On” and the “Daily Kos” – but they (the Hive Mind) appeared everywhere else also. Apart from places where they kept out.
For example write a pro “capitalist” comment on an “Economist” magazine article – and the left (the Hive Mind) will appear and attack (ridicule, abuse, “humour”, the standard Saul Alinsky tactics – although they go back to the Fabians and so on).
This is why I have a habit of just writing what I believe to be the truth on such sites – and then not reading the replies.
“Not open to other points of view Paul”.
No – not open to wasting what little remains of my life in “flame wars”.
What is this “right to be forgotten” bullshit? That’s Orwellian as hell.
Paul Marx wrote:
Wiki used to have a decent write-up on the Luddite Fallacy, which is indeed a fallacy and demonstrable with historical data and a basic understanding of economics, but alas the Neo-Marxists got a hold of it and tried to turn the fallacy into a fallacy of a fallacy, i.e. that the Luddite Fallacy is a myth. Now, years later, it’s swung back the other way just a bit, but it still doesn’t say, flat out, that the Luddites were indeed wrong, very wrong, and not at all right in their thinking on several levels. And if technological and scientific progress caused a net loss in jobs, no one would be working today.
The Literate Platupus wrote: “The USA is very different JGIII, the number there is 79.9% eloi…”
Jesus preferred to call them sheep. (John 10:7)
Don’t shoot the messenger!
Rich Rostrom wrote: “And its design is such that once an item starts showing up in searches, it will copied and linked to, propagating further. This is good for truth, but bad for error.”
You can write some innane blurb about something few care about, (like that the Jinn live in a magical land called Djinnestan for example, or that it’s capital city is known as Schadou Kiam.) and you’ll find that same blurb, word for word, plagerized all over the internet. True or false no longer matters since we live in a matrix of perception anyway. This is what Stephan Colbert called Truthiness.
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/63ite2/the-word—truthiness
Rich, correcting grievous errors is not “the right to be forgotten”.
It’s also a fact (alleged by me, anyway) that no Encyclopedia (nor Peer-reviewed Journal, come to that) is free of untruths deliberate or not, explicit or implicit. They may come from ignorance of known facts, ignorance based on present knowledge (or currently-accepted theory), and out-and-out slanted writing or editing based on either the mindsets/worldviews of the intellectual circles in which the writers and editors run or the deliberate wish of the writer or editor to promote a certain belief or understanding, regardless of its factual truth or falsity.
In other words, the entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica are (and were) not to be accepted as necessarily Direct from the Mouth of the Lord, nor are the articles in the much-vaunted Peer-Reviewed Journals. (Everyone knows this. For instance in the “humanities” we have Social Text and The Sokal Affair.) Or, in the science-and-technology field, one example would be the Journal of Vibration and Control (JVC), in which, per
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/10/scholarly-journal-retracts-60-articles-smashes-peer-review-ring/,
H/T to Anthony Watts:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/10/peer-review-ring-busted/
So, cribbing from President Reagan, it is not only in the case of Wikipedia that we should “Trust [or not], but verify.”
John Galt 111, when speaking about European Eloi, the politically INcorrect term is Euro-peon.
Julie,
Indeed. What use would be peer review in dealing with Sir Isaac Newton’s million words on alchemy?
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/
GIGO.
Good heavens, Mr Ed! Does James Hanson (sp) know about this? Gavin Schmidt? Phil Jones? What about that Post-Normal Science guy, Michael Hulme–is that his name?
I think they should get together and publish a journal, peer-reviewed of course, to deal with the mountains of data and innumerable (literally) new insights into the science of chymistry generated by means of Latent Semantic Analysis, toot sweet. I wonder who will be the peers who review. Perhaps the Three Weird Sisters? And Korzybski, of course.
Julie, there is already an organization dedicated to precisely that: BAHFest.
Paul Marks suggested that “no Irish need apply” signs did not appear in Boston. This is incorrect. Professor Richard Jensen established this falsehood in 2002, and it gained ground rapidly, until a high school student’s research proved him wrong. Rebecca Fried’s article documenting such notices in newspaper ads in many cities, including Boston, appeared in the Oxford Journal of Social History. The main period for the NINA signs seems to have been roughly 1850-1910. Setting his story in the 1920s is a bit of a stretch for Kerry, though not an extreme one. The point that his family was German is more salient!
http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/07/03/jsh.shv066.full
Richard Spacek: The link you provide is subscription only, not visible to me. Here is a link from the article by Mr Jensen in Chicago that is open, and is the one in dispute.
Richard – I was very specific.
I was talking about the 1920s when John Kerry’s grandfather arrived in Boston.
The Irish ran the city in the 1920s – there were no such signs then.
If anything “English Americans” were persecuted in 20th century Boston – see the “Curley Effect” named after Mayor Curley.
It was not a “bit of stretch” for John Kerry.
He was lying.
Lying, lying, lying.
Like he does about everything.
By the way his grandfather was not German – he was Austrian.
Still I accept your point – not “Irish” as John Kerry claimed (that was just another lie of his).
John Kerry from a long time ago.
He sat before Congress (on oath and in uniform) and lied about the United States armed forces in Indochina.
He gave aid-and-comfort to the enemy in time of war.
He should have been hanged by the neck till he was dead.
So people shocked by Mr Kerry’s action today in Cuba or his actions in relation to the “Hastener” regime in Iran should not be.
Mr Kerry is a traitor – and has been for a very long time.
This is why he had a young Barack Obama as the key speaker at his 2004 Convention.
Richard and Mr Ed: Here is a link to an open article about the teenage girl Richard was referencing. It’s an interesting story.
Laird, thanks for the alert! You’re going, of course, as shall I. I wonder if we should buy an entire block of seats for the more geekie eliti infesting Samizdata? ;>)
Laird, there is not afaics, a single example in that article of any such advert. There is reference to gangs of Irish excluding others, a practice which was, according to an Irish person of my acquaintance was also a habit of people from Mayo wrt other Irish in America, but no evidence, no citations, just a hagiography.
Surely the newspaper archives would be the place to start looking for evidence, this might be an afternoon’s work, not so-called academic research.
Mr Ed, did you read the article I linked? She did exactly what you suggested (searching newspaper archives) and found scads of examples.
Now Twitter is preventing Politwoops from noting when politicians edit their Twitter feed content… all in the name of honoring users’ right to silently correct typos.