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In the United States courts have consistently found that
the right to publish the truth about someone’s past supersedes
any right to privacy.
In Europe you don’t have the right to say anything about anybody, even if it is true.
No First Amendment freedom of speech rights in Europe, and the government tyrants want to keep it that way there. This means you can only say the truth if the truth doesn't anger the government. On Its Own, Europe Backs Web Privacy Fights By SUZANNE DALEY Published: August 9, 2011 MADRID — All 90 people wanted information deleted from the Web. Among them was a victim of domestic violence who discovered that her address could easily be found through Google. Another, well into middle age now, thought it was unfair that a few computer key strokes could unearth an account of her arrest in her college days. They might not have received much of a hearing in the United States, where Google is based. But here, as elsewhere in Europe, an idea has taken hold —individuals should have a “right to be forgotten” on the Web. Spain’s government is now championing this cause. It has ordered Google to stop indexing information about 90 citizens who filed formal complaints with its Data Protection Agency. The case is now in court and being watched closely across Europe for how it might affect the control citizens will have over information they posted, or which was posted about them, on the Web. Whatever the ruling in the Spanish case, the European Union is also expected to weigh in with new “right to be forgotten” regulations this fall. Viviane Reding, the European Union’s justice commissioner, has offered few details of what she has in mind. But she has made clear she is determined to give privacy watchdogs greater power. “I cannot accept that individuals have no say over their data once it has been launched into cyberspace,” she said last month. She said she had heard the argument that more control was impossible, and that Europeans should “get over it.” But, Ms. Reding said, “I don’t agree.” On this issue, experts say, Europe and the United States have largely parted company. “What you really have here is a trans-Atlantic clash,” said Franz Werro, who was born and raised in Switzerland and is now a law professor at Georgetown University. “The two cultures really aren’t going in the same direction when it comes to privacy rights. “ For instance, in the United States, Mr. Werro said, courts have consistently found that the right to publish the truth about someone’s past supersedes any right to privacy. Europeans, he said, see things differently: “In Europe you don’t have the right to say anything about anybody, even if it is true.” Mr. Werro says Europe sees the need to balance freedom of speech and the right to know against a person’s right to privacy or dignity, concepts often enshrined in European laws. The European perspective was shaped by the way information was collected and used against individuals under dictators like Franco and Hitler and under Communism. Government agencies routinely compiled dossiers on citizens as a means of control. Court cases over these issues have popped up in many corners of Europe. In Germany, for instance, Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber, who became infamous for killing a German actor in 1990, are suing Wikipedia to drop the entry about them. German privacy laws allow suppression of criminal identities in news accounts once people have paid their debt to society. The lawyer for the two killers argues that criminals have a right to privacy too, and a right to be left alone. Google has also faced suits in several countries, including Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, over its efforts to collect street-by-street photographs for its Street View feature. In Germany, where courts found that Street View was legal, Google allowed individuals and businesses to opt out, and about 250,000 have. The issue, however, has had no traction in the United States, where anyone has the right to take pictures of anything in plain sight from the street. Google declined to discuss the Spanish cases, instead issuing a statement saying that requiring search engines to ignore some data “would have a profound chilling effect on free expression without protecting people’s privacy.” In a blog post this year, Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel, discussed the subject under the headline, “Foggy thinking about the Right to Oblivion.” The blog post made clear that he was speaking for himself, not Google. But he left little doubt that he considered Europe’s efforts to forge new privacy rights poorly defined and misguided, raising complex legal and technical questions. In fact, the phrase “right to be forgotten” is being used to cover a batch of issues, ranging from those in the Spanish case to the behavior of companies seeking to make money from private information that can be collected on the Web. Some European experts feel that new rules of play need to be drawn up anyway. Mr. Werro says many Europeans, including himself, are broadly uncomfortable with the way personal information is found by search engines and used for commerce. When ads pop up on his screen, clearly linked to subjects that are of interest to him, he says he finds it Orwellian. A recent poll conducted by the European Union found that most Europeans agree. Three out of four said they were worried about how Internet companies used their information and wanted the right to delete personal data at any time. Ninety percent wanted the European Union to take action on the right to be forgotten. Spain’s Data Protection Agency, created in the 1990s to protect individual rights, believes that search engines have altered the process by which most data ends up forgotten — and therefore adjustments need to be made. The deputy director of the agency, Jesús Rubí, pointed to the official government gazette, which used to publish every weekday, including bankruptcy auctions, official pardons, and who passed the civil service exams. Usually 220 pages of fine print, it quickly ended up gathering dust on various backroom shelves. The information was still there, but not easily accessible. Then two years ago, the 350-year-old publication went online, making it possible for embarrassing information — no matter how old — to be obtained easily. Mr. Rubí said he doubted that anyone meant for the information to haunt citizens forever: “The law obliges us to put this info in the gazette. But I am sure that if the law was written today, lawmakers would say O.K., publish this, but it should not be accessible by a search engine.” The publisher of the government publication, Fernando Pérez, said it was meant to foster transparency. Lists of scholarship winners, for instance, make it hard for the government officials to steer all the money to their own children. “But maybe,” he said, “there is information that has a life cycle and only has value for a certain time.” Experts say that Google and other search engines see some of these court cases as an assault on a principle of law already established — that search engines are essentially not responsible for the information they corral from the Web, and hope the Spanish court agrees. The companies believe if there are privacy issues, the complainants should address those who posted the material on the Web. But some experts in Europe believe that search engines should probably be reined in. “They say they are not publishing, so you should address yourself elsewhere,” said Javier de la Cueva, a Madrid lawyer specializing in the relationship between law and technology. “But they are the ones that are spreading the word. Without them no one would find these things.” |