Google is planning to flag up search results it has censored following a controversial ruling that allows European citizens the right to demand information on them to be erased.
The search engine is considering placing an alert at the bottom of each page where it has removed links in the wake of the landmark “right to be forgotten” ruling last month.
The decision by the EU Court of Justice allows people living in Europe to ask for links to “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” material to be removed from search results, although it will still be available on the original Web page.
Google has since been deluged with tens of thousands of requests from Internet users to take down sensitive information on them since the ruling on May 13.
It is understood Google is planning to flag censored search results in a similar way to how it alerts users to takedown requests over copyright infringing material. For example, a Google search for “Adele MP3” shows that it has removed a number of results from that page after receiving complaints under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Google is also planning to include information about “right to be forgotten” removals in its biannual transparency report, which reveals the number of government requests worldwide to remove material from its search results.
Google said on Monday last week that it had so far received 41,000 requests to take down sensitive material from people in Europe since the landmark ruling, including a politician with a murky past, a convicted pedophile and a man who had attempted to murder his family and wanted to remove links about his crime.
Google chief executive Larry Page has said that nearly a third of the 41,000 requests received related to a fraud or scram, one-fifth concerned serious crime and 12 percent are connected to child pornography arrests.
The search company, which launched an online form two weeks ago for people wanting to airbrush material about their past, does not have to comply with every request, but must consider whether removing information is in the public interest.
Google has set up an advisory committee to issue recommendations about where the boundaries of the public interest lie in the requests, made up of seven people including its executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Wales has described the ruling as censorship and raised concerns that news organizations would be particularly affected because Google is the primary source through which Internet users find information.
In an interview with the technology site TechCrunch over the weekend, Wales said: “I think the decision will have no impact on people’s right to privacy, because I don’t regard truthful information in court records published by court order in a newspaper to be private information. If anything, the decision is likely to simply muddle the interesting philosophical questions and make it more difficult to make real progress on privacy issues.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese