Federal Court of Appeal ruling opens door for Canadians to have ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google
Google’s search engine is covered by federal privacy law, opening the door for people to demand to have their names be made unsearchable
Privacy rights you say? Sounds nice.
As an American I have this feeling that I'll soon have plenty of time to express my Privacy grievances to the various 24/7 live streaming drones that follow me though my daily routine.
But if I keep my Apple and Amazon memeberships up to date, they'll apply nice Instagram filters to the stream, at least.
I used to be against this, but as time has gone on, and i've seen just how evil Google can be, i've become more and more in favor of it!
I used to be against this, but as time has gone on, and i've seen just how evil Google can be, i've become more and more in favor of it!
While I agree that Google is evil, don't forget that they are a search engine. If Google doesn't show the results, another search engine probably will.
How does the government enforce this though, and ensure compliance? Are they going to demand to see every database Google owns?
Germany has laws like that already and the GDPR includes the right to data erasure. Wikipedia has a lengthy article on this. The idea that somehow Google or other Big Tech firms are unregulatable is a myth. They very much are regulatable, given a strong enough political will, despite what united-statesian anti-regulation extremists preach.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Google’s search engine is covered by federal privacy law, a court has ruled, opening the door for people to demand to have their names made unsearchable – commonly known as a “right to be forgotten.”
The man said outdated and inaccurate information about him in newspaper articles found on the internet was leading to great personal harm, including physical assault, employment discrimination, severe social stigma and persistent fear.
Ultimately, the Privacy Commissioner asked the Federal Court to rule on its jurisdiction to address the complaint under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
The ruling authorizes the Privacy Commissioner to review the complaint to determine whether it should recommend to Google that the complainant’s name be delisted from the search engine.
In carrying out that purpose, Google is agnostic as to the nature of that content: nothing turns on whether or not it is journalistic, let alone on whether it meets certain aspirational standards of journalism.
Mr. Fenrick, the complainant’s co-counsel, said laws exist in Europe and in Quebec to allow people to press for their names to be delisted, and require privacy and autonomy to be balanced against the public’s right to know.
The original article contains 873 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
But this is stupid this is not GDPR, this is just removing your name from Google search. Why not go after the sites who have the wrong information. So people just start using Bing or DDG to search people.
They have similar legislation in other jurisdictions. Does anyone up to no good get to hide that fact? What about people who share a name and one person wants search results hidden and the other(s) don't or even actively want to be searchable?
