Does Parliament or Google decide when your criminal past is forgotten? "It's never been suggested that the public have some right to require the press to impart information to them," barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC told the Right To Be Forgotten trial in London's High Court yesterday. Tomlinson, acting on behalf of pseudonymous complainant "NT1", was discussing European data protection laws during …
Seems like the ministry of truth from 1984.
The events happened, they were reported, and by the account also referenced in a publication.
Although the convictions are spent, history does not change. You cannot un-steal the money, un-murder someone etc. regardless of convictions expiring.
He would probably have a case IMHO if he did not get a job on the basis of someone considering a spent conviction. That however does not start erasing and censoring history, that in this case does not appear to be inaccurate, or conjecture.
I am really uncomfortable with the idea that the past or people can be forgotten. That's North Korea's job.
I quite agree. The point of the rehabilitation of offenders process is that after the limit has passed you don't need tyo disclose a spent offence, and (I assume) it doesn't come up on CRB checks. Similarly it should be unacceptable to use a spent offence to discriminate against someone for a job, housing etc.
But it doesn't change history. The Great Train Robbery actually happened. Should Google (or any other search engine) be obliged to delete references to crimes more than x years ago? I frequently use the wonderful newspapers.library.wales, which has digitised Welsh newspapers up to 1919. Should that remove from the index the name of "Thomas Edwards" who was accused of indecently assaulting his step-daughter, Mary Davies, aged 11? (The judge threw the case out as a put up job)? Okay, it happened in 1870, but that's not the point. And in fact it goes further. Is there a rehabilitation of non-offenders rule? Should Google be required to link a report of an accusation to the subsequent acquittal? I don't see how they can, but that is potentially even more damaging to a person - first search result is "Suspected kiddie fiddling dentist arrested after wife shops him", but 17th is "Dentist's wife convicted of perjury and given seven years"
No one is being asked to change history.
Respecting convictions having been spent means the CRB won't reveal what convictions have been deemed spent. They don't seek to deny those convictions, they just won't reveal them. I don't see that it's unreasonable to ask Google and others to do exactly the same.
In fact, doing otherwise would seem to be putting Google above the law which applies to the CRB and everyone else.
People are using the term CRB incorrectly here. What use to be the CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) ceased to exist and was replaced by the DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service). The DBS provides two levels of check (I believe) Standard, and Enhanced.
Standard Disclosure will not show crimes that are spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
Enhanced Disclosure WILL show ALL convictions, including those that are deemed spent.
Your PNC record (Police National Computer) will hold your Criminal Data until your 100th birthday, regardless of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
On the part of Google, I can't see any problem here, they are a search engine, they are merely echoing information already in the public domain on other websites that it is indexing. If the person in question has issue with those websites, he would need to take up his issues with them.
@ DaveTheForensicAnalyst
They can't go to the source websites, in most cases, because they are public record.
The problem here is the ease with which this information can be found today, not that it exists. As I and others have said elsewhere, in the past, if you wanted to find the information you had to properly research it, which involved time and money. That was a natural barrier to finding spent information.
You had to go to the newspaper archives or library and sift through newspapers, until you found the information. That was something most prospective employers and casual searchers would never do. Therefore the spent information rarely surfaced, but was there if you really wanted to find it.
This natural "forgetfulness" worked as the law intended.
Google changes that, things that should be "naturally forgotten" to the general masses is not forgotten and, depending on how much interesting other stuff a person has done, turns up in a very high position in a web search. That means information that should have been forgotten is still turning up as most relevant, even though, legally, you shouldn't see it when searching for that person's name under normal circumstances.
Once the link to the person's name has been removed, only "relevant" information is returned, when searching for this person. Searching for the original crime under other keywords will still return it - you just have to want to find it.
Once the link to the person's name has been removed, only "relevant" information is returned, when searching for this person.
I don't know about you but I do find relevant that somebody I'm interested in as a business partner or otherwise has a criminal record, even as a juvenile. It gives you an idea about what kind of person that someone is.
History is not rewritten and stays available in its entirety. Remember, Google does not have access to go and modify the websites it references.
And those websites stay referenced, and can still be found via Google search, and can still be found if you search for the case in question.
The point is very specifically about whether typing the *name* of a person should link there, forever and ever.
So it's not North Korea, 1984, or anything Manichean and simple as you make it sound. It's really something that needs to be carefully assessed. Can a society really rehabilitate people if in practice, thanks to search engines, they will forever be shunned by employers?
Can a society really rehabilitate people if in practice, thanks to search engines, they will forever be shunned by employers?
Probably not, but I'm not sure its Google the ex-cons really need worry about. Most large employers consult with verious companies that have their own databases of things there are to know about a job applicant. I've been vetted by a couple of such agencies in the past, though where they obtain their data and what constitutes their dataset I do not know - I do know court records form part of it though, as a case I won against a utility provider cropped up.
It is not about re-writing history, the original articles aren't being taken down. The book isn't being rounded up and burnt.
What is being asked for is, in line with law, not to show the results when searching for TN1. If Google follow the right to be forgotten as intended, searching for Alpha or fraud would still dig up those articles, but anybody searching purely on TN1 wouldn't get the information.
It is a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless. In the "good old days," the newspaper articles would have been used as fish and chips wrapping and most people would have forgotten about it, by the time he was released. He could, as the Rehabilitation Act says, be rehabilitated and this information should not prejudice him in the future, because he has paid his debt to society. If you were really interested, you could go to the library and look for the book or go through their newspaper archives, but you would need to put in a reasonable amount of effort to "circumvent" his right at rehabilitation. That isn't something most people would do, unless they had good reason to.
The Internet makes this "natural forgetfulness of the masses" a non-thing. The Internet doesn't forget, even when, by law, it should. That is why these safeguards have been put in place.
If you really want to do the research, there is nothing to stop you, but Google isn't allowed to help you circumvent the law. You have to do the legwork yourself, as was intended.
If the right to be forgotten meant that all news archives had to be burnt and books burnt or the original stories on the news websites deleted, I would be against it. But in this case, nobody is re-writing history, the history is still there, if you go looking for it, you just can't take the (illegal) shortcut of searching on TN1's name to find it.
Part of the problem is that this is all about names 'TN1'. Names are generally non-unique. So if result 1 for John Smith is about a convicted kiddie-fiddler, can a different John Smith object? When I google my name the first result is about someone who got paid to kick a football around. Can I object to that as it could lead some people to infer I am a worthless thicko rather than a socially valuable and intelligent IT professional?
Much of this discussion seems to assume that if I type "Arthur Dent" into Google it will telepathically decide which one I mean and will display a complete personal history of the "Arthur Dent" I'm interested in. We know it dosn't, but I wonder if some judges and lawyers do.
A few things that have just come to mind.
1) What happens if your writing a biography/history of someone/some event in 10, 20, 50+ years tine.
2) What about Bing? do they automatically have to apply the same 'no result shown due to EU law."
3) google.com still shows the result when google.co.uk (or other EU's googles) don't
@Bob Wheeler
1) Biography etc. is different and would be under the journalistic exemption, in all probability, IANAL. And, again, if you are doing an accurate documentation of an event, that is allowed. You would also cover, for example his prison sentence and the fact that he was reformed and released.
But Google aren't doing anything journalistic and they are not checking their results for accuracy, before displaying them.
2) Yes, Bing, DuckDuckGo and all other search engines are also covered by this. If they get served with a right to be forgotten notice, they have to remove results for those keywords as well.
3) Yes, that is true, but Google have also changed their system and I, for example, cannot get to google.com any more for searches, or google.co.uk, I am stuck with google.de. (Yes, I could hop through a VPN and come out in the USA and use google.com.)
If you delink something in the internet, it stops existing for al practical purposes.. so yes, it is basically burning the books to rewrite history, even if the declared intention is not that.
I don't think the book or whatever would be de-listed, just de-associated with NT1's name. You could still find the book user other search conditions I would have thought, and still get to the underlying information.
@Aitor1 as has been said many times, the original article isn't delinked. It is still there and you can still search for it, just not with the banned keywords.
So, searching for the case itself (case number, investigating police officer, damaged parties (assuming they also didn't apply to be forgotten), employer, type of crime etc.) will still return information on the case, it is still there and still searchable, just not in conjunction with a name that the law has deigned to no longer be relevant.
Do real researches/writing instead of googling and some copying and pasting?
Google algorithms are woefully not apt to create some people biographical record. If they rank on link popularity, for example, they will highlight an arrest, instead of an acquittal.
Even plain old press does it because it sell more, but at least is not a globally searchable database ordered in the wrong way.
"
1) What happens if your writing a biography/history of someone/some event in 10, 20, 50+ years tine.
"
How the heck do you think it was done prior to he Internet? I'd say that anyone who intends to present a bunch of articles found using Google as being a factual biography/history should not publish anyway.
"1) What happens if your writing a biography/history of someone/some event in 10, 20, 50+ years tine."
This is where it gets interesting.
If NT1 is who I think it is, his Wikipedia page makes only passing mention of the case despite over a billion dollars being involved and doesn't even mention his conviction. And if not, the fact that someone involved in a case of that scale can already get it censored is concerning.
Hindsight is wonderful, but mostly useless...
infer I am a worthless thicko rather than a socially valuable and intelligent IT professional?
You are up on the deal, society clearly prefers the thicko, nobody values intelligent IT professionals, not even the Gov. who should know better.
I didn't learn that until well after the opportunity to be a thicko kicking footballs around had passed.
>Part of the problem is that this is all about names 'TN1'. Names are generally non-unique.
In this case the article states his name comes up immediately and he was clearly identified without any question of uniqueness. Also this was not even attempted by Google as a defence. It seems clear this is no John Smith.
Thanks Big_D, you and AC above make good points and have made me adjust my thinking on this.
I'm conflicted though. Searching for TN1 on google is not the same as searching for TN1 + (Criminal OR Conviction) on google. A CRB check is a search for TN1 + (Criminal OR Conviction) and not a general search for TN1 because of the dataset searched.
I think I'm coming around to the articles and book should be delinked for TN1 + (Criminal OR Conviction) and for TN1 on its own. The hard part is where to draw the line, should Alpha + TN1 return these links? (I've heard of Alpha, did TN1 work for them? Oh!)
It would be a whole lot simpler to ensure that anyone exercising prejudice based on a spent conviction gets properly punished. And that's far from simple.
"
It would be a whole lot simpler to ensure that anyone exercising prejudice based on a spent conviction gets properly punished. And that's far from simple.
"
It would be impossible. If there are 10 applications for a job, and you are one of the 9 people turned down, how can you prove that disclosure by Google of a long-spent conviction was the reason you were not chosen? Even if you are one of the unlucky 9 in your next 100 job applications.
It goes deeper than convictions. Perhaps as a teenager you were mentioned in the media for having some extremely naïve and ill-thought out opinions - and now whenever anyone Googles your name, up pops the association with those very iffy opinions, presented in exactly the same way as if you had voiced those opinions yesterday rather than 30 years ago, and without any of the context that the attitudes and events of the time would have provided.
It is not about re-writing history, the original articles aren't being taken down. The book isn't being rounded up and burnt.
No, not being burnt, but asking search engines (and possibly later retailers) to remove results that point to the book comes very close to banning the book altogether.
The whole concept of a "right to be forgotten" is kind of ridiculous. You can not force a person to forget something, and Google can not "forget" something either. It can only suppress information that exists. That is not "forgetting", that is censorship. No, it doesn't alter history. It just forces publishers, search engines, and other services to lie by omitting certain information.
"
Google can not "forget" something either. It can only suppress information that exists. That is not "forgetting", that is censorship. No, it doesn't alter history. It just forces publishers, search engines, and other services to lie by omitting certain information.
"
So let's follow that through. If, as you say, failing to list something in a search result amounts to censorship, then surely Joe Blogs should be able to insist that when someone Googles his name, the results should not mention only his criminal conviction, but should present his entire day-by-day autobiography right back to his birth? After all, failing to include the historical fact that he won the egg-and-spoon race at age 6 is surely just as much censorship as failing to include the fact that he was convicted of drink-driving at age 20?
In the good old days, a really big case would get an article in the encyclopedia.
If journalism and truthfulness are a defence - truthfulness being challenged here probably because if that's conceded then the case fails - then newspapers online and the BBC probably are entitled to keep up a story about NT1 and their doings at Alpha and let it be searchable (I don't seem to be able to search BBC News effectively though, I may be doing it wrong).
But for Google to transfer these documents into their own database for searching is a different matter. It may be different again if the BBC, Guardian, etc., choose to submit the documents actively into Google data to be searched - I suppose, but it ray be late to say here that I'm not a lawyer.
I am really uncomfortable with the idea that the past or people can be forgotten. That's North Korea's job.
Two issues here.
1. People forgetting about things like conventions being spent.
2. People trying to fix 1 by applying various "rights to be forgotten".
There is no easy answer especially considering that penalties for any value of 1 are no longer of the form of "pay your debt to the society". So people, quite rightly, look at it and say - I do not give a damn that his/her conviction is spent.
And we have the very peculiar scenario that I, who was around and remember the headlines will have no problems in searching for TN1, Alpha and fraud (with appropriate solutions) and so may feel somewhat unhappy about entering into a business relationship with that person, whereas my daughter who was not born then will not have those prompts and so may enter into a relationship which on past evidence may prove to be slightly dodgy.
So we have one rule for the elderly buggers and another one for the young innocent ones. What happens to any form of diligence in these circumstances.
"Dad"
"Yes"
"You are an old fart, aren't you?"
"No"
"But you are old?"
"A bit"
"So how should I search for TN1 and Alpha to find out whether it is a good idea to enter into this business with him? "
Seems a tad unlikely.
That is absurd. We have a rehabilitation of offenders act which allows people to be rehabilitated. That means they do not have to disclose a mistake they made in the past.
This ruling would not release anything from history - you can still find it in the newspaper but it means that it is not front and centre every second and brands you for life. We already have laws that discourage this - such as the right to be forgotten and rehabilitation of offenders act.
This is hardly a free speech argument and google are hardly journalists. Stop with the straw man argument.
"
Although the convictions are spent, history does not change. You cannot un-steal the money, un-murder someone etc. regardless of convictions expiring.
"
Let us say that as a teenager you shoplifted a few items, perhaps as a dare or to impress your peers, or maybe to obtain booze that you were not permitted to buy. Then for many years later, whenever anyone Googles your name, the first 3 results announce the fact that you are a convicted thief, which has resulted in you being turned down for jobs time & time again. Would you say that it is fair and just that a single youthful indiscretion should blight your entire life? Perhaps even pushing you down the path of serious criminality as the only way you can hope to earn a reasonable amount of money.
whenever anyone Googles your name, the first 3 results announce the fact that you are a convicted thief
Only if your name is something like Constantine Theophilus Mugwump III - in which case you just need to do a bit of social engineering, and create a dozen popular pages that list your work for Oxfam Cats Protection League.
And I am surprised that for TN1 it is the old spent convictions that come first. Most name searches in Google start with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, Wikipedia entries, 192.com listings and professional references. TN1 must have a very dull on-line life if ancient convictions are the best that Google can find.
Should we just then ignore existing laws? Are you against the Rehabilitation of Offenders act? Or the Right to be forgotten? Because these two laws allow people to move on, you would then argue the UK has been operating as North Korean regime for the past 40 years.
Our existing laws are in place for people to be able to move on from their lives after a mistake and be able to contribute to society. It is a good law because people do make mistakes.
However, google is preventing this process because it is a click-bait search engine and brands people negatively for life. It seems silly that a search engine have such sweeping power over private citizens.
We need to ask ourselves if endlessly stalking people and their history is the way we want to have our society grow and prosper.
The laws are in place for good reason - google has circumvented this and should follow our laws like everyone else.
Yes, I know, this is probably an unpopular opinion.
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act states that there are circumstances in which certain offences can't be considered - for example, if someone was fined for protesting on a demo ago, that doesn't count against you on a job application ten years later.
It doesn't, however, say that the newspapers shouldn't report on that. The fact that newspapers do, and have, reported on things is a given. What Google is doing is finding an easier way to locate this information than having to go to a dusty cupboard in the back of a library and look through old newspapers.
Now, if the information presented were untrue, that would a very different problem. But in this case, it isn't.
I don't think the right to be forgotten should be shelved. I don't have an easy answer to all this, either, and nor do I think there is one. I just think that, in this instance, Google is in the right.
I tend to agree with you. At the end of the day, Google searches do not create web content, they just link to sources of it.
If the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act does not require newspapers to remove the historical reports of the offence, then why should Google not link to it?
Maybe the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act should be updated to include rules on how to handle News content published online.
@Alister, because in the past, those newspaper archives could be searched through by somebody who really wanted information about the demo, for example, but they would have to make an effort to go to the archive and find the information, it wasn't "generally available", which meant the vast majority of people no longer "remember" the incident.
Google circumvents this natural mass forgetfulness, even when the law says it should be.
The archive is still there, you can still search Google for the article, using other keywords, just the keywords that the law decides aren't allowed shouldn't return those results. So, using the example, searching for Zippy would not be allowed to show the article about being fined, whereas searching specifically for the demo would turn up that result.
From the article, it sounds as though Google aren't just linking to a newspaper article about the conviction. They're also displaying a snippet referencing the conviction in the search results.
That's a big distinction for me. They can't just claim to be linking to an existing article when they themselves are re-publishing details of the conviction. It also makes it trivially easy to find the conviction details without even the effort of clicking through to the links.
Maybe the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act should be updated to include rules on how to handle News content published online.
Nice theory, but how?
Search term is "TN1" Google has many pages/articles/references. How does Google decide that a given reference relates to a spent conviction? It would need some very clever AI, loaded with all the rules, and even then it would probably get it wrong. And simply blocking links to every instance of TN1 would be equally wrong, as it may include relevant unspent convictions, or morally questionable (but technically legal) behaviour.
@Pen-y-gors exactly, which is why we have the right to be forgotten. The person affected turns to the search engines (it isn't just about Google) and gives them the specific links that should be delisted in searches using their name (and only search terms including their name).
So searching for "TN1" won't return the information, nor will "TN1 conviction", "TN1 criminal" etc. but searching for "Alpha", "fraud" etc. would still return the relevant articles.
If Google would actually worry more about following the law, rather than thinking to itself, that it is cheaper to send lawyers on a wild googe chase, rather than follow the law, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
According to http://hub.unlock.org.uk/knowledgebase/a-simple-guide-to-the-roa/
"The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 gives people with spent convictions and cautions the right not to disclose them when applying for most jobs, and buying insurance."
It doesn't indicate that a potential employer can't turn you down on the basis of a previous conviction they read about in an old newspaper or via a Google search.
That's not the same as your post:
"... that there are circumstances in which certain offences can't be considered ... on a job application ten years later."
I think it would be relevant if you get a job and then your employer later finds out about a spent conviction and decides to dismiss you because of that. e.g. you have a job as an accounts clerk and the managing director finds out about your 10 year old weed possession conviction and sacks you.
The thing is, with your demo example, if you search for "Zippy's Sausage Factory", you don't get any information about you being fined for protesting at the demo. If you search for the demo, you get the results.
The information is still there and it is still searchable and accessible, using terms that are deemed "legal".
That's the thing that makes me think.
Take Google out of the frame, and if anyone wanted to find out about the guy they'd have to go digging - and make the value judgement as to whether it was worth the effort.
With Google there, you just type in the name and apparently the conviction is the first thing that comes up. No effort needed, and no judgement either.
A difficult decision for that judge - glad it's not me.
Completely agree.
I think there is similar feeling about Street View too. Sure, everything you can see on Street View is something that you could see by just going there and looking, and (in most cases) would be entitled to photograph too. But it does take on a different feel when you don't have to actually get up and go and do it yourself or pay someone else to do it.
Modern technology seems to be exposing a lot of areas of the Law and societal convention where things didn't used to need laws or conventions simply because they weren't possible or at least weren't practical - but now they are. The dangerous aspect is that there doesn't seem to be a legal/political/social discussion on that wider point (except on El Reg, obviously!) but instead it is currently being worked out by trying to shoehorn the existing 20th century law into the 21st century issue.
Even in this current example where data protection laws are actually more recent it still seems like this is fundamentally missing the point - this case shouldn't be about the technicality of whether Google is breaching data protection by holding a small snippet of info in its index or cache.
But, to be honest, I'm not sure I could write down in one sentence what it should be about!
>With Google there, you just type in the name and apparently the conviction is the first thing that comes up. No effort needed, and no judgement either.
Maybe effort is needed on the part of the convicted to do things that give them more positive publicity and top search results. If the first results were links to a personal website, charity work or something else other than a crime from 10+ years ago then it wouldn't be so much of a problem. Perhaps NT1 should have moved on with their life in a positive manner...
@Will Godfrey
I think you have touched on the nub of it here.
In the past, you would have had some memory of "wasn't that the guy who....", then that might spur you to go to the local reference library and trawl thought the daily paper of your choice, or maybe spend a day in Fleet St. itself.
Nowadays you don't even have to have a the foggiest notation that 'that guy' was involved, or not, in anything at all.
On balance, I'm more on goggle's side in this than not.
Hur. I can probably summarise the problem more succinctly.
Mentally processing this class of data *fairly* is hard. If people find hard-to-process data easily, it will probably be processed *unfairly*.
Hard-to-process data should be hard to find, so only people willing to try 'hard' can get it, which increases the odds of it being processed fairly.
Put the cookies on the top shelf. The dumb kids can't gorge till they puke. The smart kids can still get it, and are much less likely to gorge.
<DouglasAdams>To summarise the summary of the summary : "People are a Problem"</DouglasAdams>
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