by
Mark Ollig
What
are the most dominant gatherers and holders of information in this digital age?
It’s
the search engines of the Internet.
Many
of us, when wanting to learn more about a politician, private citizen, company,
or product, will first turn to a search engine like Google.
We
simply type in any name, and see the search results.
Amazing,
isn’t it?
People’s
opinions are sometimes formed solely on what the search results disclose –
whether they are true or not.
Well,
what happens when information about someone is incorrect?
What
recourse does one have when information about them on the Internet is
inaccurate, illegally published, defamatory, or, intentionally falsified by
someone on a social network?
Supposing
your social security number, an image of your check signature, or other
personal information ended up being stored on a non-secured website, and was
retrieved by someone using a search engine?
Yours
truly is not trying to scare anyone, and the odds of this scenario are unlikely
to occur for you; but what if it did?
After
typing my name inside quotation marks (which instructs the search results to
include only those with “Mark” and “Ollig” in them), Google presented me with
5,120 search results.
I
suppose this high number could be interpreted as somewhat flattering; or, it
might suggest I spend too much time on the Internet.
The
search results also informed me there is more than one Mark Ollig in the world.
Google
has had 16 years to search and store Web links containing millions of “bits and
bytes” worth of data regarding this humble columnist.
While
going through a number of my search result links, I began to notice many were
several years old.
Of
course, for years, yours truly has been writing columns, blogs, and posting on
Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites scattered throughout the
Internet, so there’s a lot of content out there.
A
digital trail of my Internet information had been data-mined and gleaned by
Google’s search engine bots.
These
bots, or Web Robots, are also identified as Spiders and Web Crawlers.
The
bots are software programs, navigating and collecting information from publicly
accessible Internet websites.
Search
engines use this information to index the content found on the Web.
Bots
are constantly gathering information and storing it in data servers.
This
stored content is made available for users on Google’s search engine.
Google’s
search engine doesn’t create the information; it sends out those
information-gathering bots to retrieve content from the Internet.
I
suppose one could think of Google as a gigantic library; containing an
ever-growing collection of a variety of books.
How
long should Google, or any other search engine for that matter, be allowed to
store content about someone?
Over
the years, Google has had many accusations of privacy invasion directed at them
via court lawsuits.
In
a 2008 lawsuit, one person from Pennsylvania sued Google for $5 billion in a
“crimes against humanity” case.
The
case was eventually dismissed by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Then,
there was a 2005 copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Google by the
Authors Guild.
This
was during the Google Library Project. Google had begun scanning text from
books, making it available online to the public.
This
lawsuit accused Google of “massive copyright infringement,” stating they were
producing digital copies of copyrighted works.
In
2008, Google settled when it paid a reported $125 million. In 2013, this
lawsuit was dismissed.
The
Google Books Library Project website is: http://books.google.com.
Two
weeks ago, a directive by the Court of Justice of the European Union, sparked
much attention regarding personal information being stored and displayed by a
search engine; namely, Google Spain, which is owned, by Google, Inc.
The
court’s directive ruled European individuals have the right to ask Google to
delete personal data, and have it “to be forgotten” under the conditions of
when their personal data becomes inaccurate or outdated.
The
Court of Justice of the European Union directive points out Google is
“processing” the user information obtained by saying: “The Court further holds
that the operator of the search engine is the ‘controller’ in respect of that
processing.”
You
can read their press release here: http://tinyurl.com/bits-EU.
It
is wondered whether this directive could compel Google to remove information
when requested to do so from US citizens.
As
I understand, current federal law states websites and search engines can’t be
held liable for indexing and providing hyper-links to a third party, or other
website content.
A
person wanting to have specific information “scrubbed” from a search engine
would need to obtain a court-ordered declaration stating the content was unlawfully
made public on a website, and is to be removed.
The
court’s ruling would then be sent to the owners of the website, and/or
responsible parties operating the search engine.
If
you’re seeing inaccuracies about you or your company on Google, take action by
going to the “Removing Content From Google” webpage on Google at:
http://tinyurl.com/bits-g2.
The
discussion continues . . . what are your thoughts?
