I have some sympathy with Google. Let's say my name is John Smith and I decide I don't want certain information to be published. How can Google be sure that only my John Smith references are removed as opposed to another John Smith? Tricky.
Slippery Google greases up, aims to squirm out of EU privacy grasp
Google is wriggling desperately to escape new European privacy rules that could force it to take some responsibility for what information it republishes in response to a given search – in particular a search of someone's name. The European Parliament voted in favour of data protection reforms in March, which the EU's press …
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 12:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
"How can Google be sure that only my John Smith references are removed as opposed to another John Smith?"
Simple: you tell them exactly which of the pages that they have indexed against your name contain inappropriate content. If they are unsure of the validity of your claim, they can refer to the relevant authorities.
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Friday 20th June 2014 07:35 GMT Alan_Peery
> Simple: you tell them exactly which of the pages that they have indexed against your name
Bollocks. Complete bollocks.
You're assuming that only one John Smith is listed on the page Google has indexed. How can Google possibly know *which* John Smith the person running the search is searching for?
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 12:20 GMT big_D
You have to specify specific links and give the reasons why you believe the source information is no longer relevant or not in the public interest and you have to be able to prove that you are the John Smith in question.
If it is a 20 year old debt case, which is now resolved and now no longer legally usable in decisions on your credit worthiness, then they should remove it. This is what started the whole ball rolling, Google was returning 20 year old information about a house repo as the most relevant and actual information about the person in question, even though it was legally no longer of relevant and should therefore not be returned, or at least it shouldn't be returned as the top result...
If it is an old murder case, where you were found not guilty, I would argue it is no longer in the public interest - especially if the real murderer has been caught and convicted in the meantime.
If it is a 3 year old debt case, you wouldn't be able to argue it is no longer valid and not in the public interest.
If you were convicted of murder, you wouldn't be able to get it removed...
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 13:19 GMT TopOnePercent
If you were convicted of murder, you wouldn't be able to get it removed...
Convictions for literally almost any crime would have to be removed due tot he rehab of offenders act. The day the conviction becomes spent (as little as 12 months now) and the criminal can demand you stop disclosing it publicly, even if you were their victim or a relative of a deceased victim.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 14:19 GMT Vic
Convictions for literally almost any crime would have to be removed due tot he rehab of offenders act
Not so.
From the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 :-
5 Rehabilitation periods for particular sentences.
(1)The sentences excluded from rehabilitation under this Act are—
...
(b)a sentence of imprisonment or corrective training for a term exceeding thirty months;
So if you get 2.5 years for a crime, you are ineligible for rehabliitation under the Act. You always have to declare it.
This is why I thought it was a bit rough a while back when some kid got 4 years for trying (and failing) to arrange a riot on Facebook/Twitter/WhateverItWas. Although the law allowed for that punishment, it meant that it would be an indelible mark on his record.
Vic.
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 06:38 GMT tom dial
Would it not be more sensible to require that the source of the "no longer relevant" data be compelled to restrict internet access to it? Would not the Google (and, one would assume, Yahoo, Bing, Duck Duck Go, and other index entries) then evaporate? Do the ECJ not have the stones to order something that might actually be a solution?
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 12:21 GMT RyokuMas
No sympathy from me...
I didn't ask to be tracked and profiled, or have adverts sold to me. I didn't ask for people who know a few things about me to be able to search the web and come up with details on who I am and what I do (case in point - the A.C. troll in this thread who felt he had to take a pop at me because I use C# cross-platform). I didn't want details of things I have looked at and/or bought online made available to parties outside those website I had visited or purchased from.
And I certainly don't want my every action and communication scrutinised by a private enterprise whose only motivation is profit and tries to dodge their responsibilities, while hiding behind a mask of altruism.
Just as happened with Microsoft before them, Google have fallen prey to their own arrogance and hubris, save that Google's capacity for anti-competitive practice is far greater than Microsoft's ever was. They know this - hence their squirming to try and wriggle out of this ruling. Their big fear is that the scales will eventually fall from the eyes of even the most ardent of their fans, and everyone will realise that "Do no evil" is the greatest lie of our time.
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Friday 20th June 2014 10:10 GMT Tufty Squirrel
Re: No sympathy from me...
> I didn't ask ...
Yes you did. You used sites that make your downloads and actions public, you have a public blog, twatter account, and register account using the same handle. You give away your identity on the first two, and then complain that you're easy to find?
If you cared, you wouldn't do that.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 15:14 GMT John Bailey
Re: I wonder...
"...how quick MPs and MEPs will be to have all record of their expenses fiddling and sexual conquests purged from the public record."
Not very.. Public interest. Non qualifying. Not deleted.
"The EU can't even get their accounts in order; tells you something about how little they actually care about public interest."
And as you can't even stick to the scope of the law being discussed, tells us all we need to know about your credibility too.
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 09:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I wonder...
"And as you can't even stick to the scope of the law being discussed, tells us all we need to know about your credibility too."
If you keep the scopes narrow to avoid MEPs' continuing corrupt behaviour, then the situation will never resolved. MEPs (and the entire EU parliament) needs to be accountable to the public with immediate effect.
Only when that happens will I trust one word that spills from the mouths.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 12:20 GMT bigtimehustler
It will be impossible for any company to do, given the billions of pages indexed, if a sufficient number of people request things removed, to look into if it is them, decide upon those which have the same name but are not that person and remove only what is required would not be possible no matter how many people you employed, even forgetting the cost of employing them. Its a nonsense that seems ok on initial thought but hasn;t been properly considered, like most things the EU does.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 13:19 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
They seem happy to do the same thing if the suspect you haven't used your real name on Google+, or if there is some copyright background music in your home video on youtube.
This is simple you request a page removed, they pass it onto the courts, the court declare which page is removed. If Google can't keep up with the data flows resulting from individual court judgements - its probably in the wrong business
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 14:25 GMT John Lilburne
20 million a month
They remove over 20 million links to pirated content from search alone each month.
This is just another cost of doing business, and I likewise have no sympathy when a $100 billion company, that pays no taxes, whines about the cost of anything.
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They have been inserting little memes in everybody's mind. So Google's shills can shriek there whenever they're inclined
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 12:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Wales is an ass but he didn't get it wrong by much...
"Wales was dissembling when he claims Google is being forced to make ethical interpretations typically made by judges."
Actually... "Google is being told to make ethical interpretations typically made by judges."
They can say no, as previously stated the big danger is when they just say yes, yes, yes
This year...
Politician A: Please remove all references to this payments scandal.
Google: I'm sorry but after researching this case we have found that the information is clearly in the public interest.
Politician A: I'll appeal
Lawyers, Judges and bureaucracy later.
Google: We are keeping the information available
Next year...
Politician B: Please remove all references to this payments scandal.
Google: Yeah sure, whatever we can't be buggered anyone.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 13:05 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Well that's Google's choice. They have to make a decision on how good a search engine they want to be. If they don't want to invest in being a good search engine that provides relevant data, then perhaps someone else will do it better
With great truckloads of money comes great responsibility. They make huge wodges of cash from advertising strapped to search results, those search results are mostly a social good but also have a social cost, they can therefore put some of that profit into dealing with it. Or they can bugger off. Those are the options that society should give them. The money will still be great, after this decision is implemented - so I'm sure they'll cope with making 99.?% of the profits they made before...
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 13:20 GMT Microdot
Didn't the article say that Google could just bounce the requests to the courts for them to investigate, weigh up the merits and offer a judgement? Maybe I'm reading it wrong but if so then there's no 'Lawyers, Judges and bureaucracy' overhead for Google to deal with is there? They just have to abide by the ruling.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 20:27 GMT ratfox
re: bouncing all requests to the courts
I really don't think Google is going to be able to just bounce all requests to the courts. It would be way too easy for to many companies to reject all legal requests, force claimants to pay for a lawyer, bog up the legal system, and ultimately not do it.
Engineers have trouble to understand this, but laws do not work like computers programs. Using bugs and loopholes to game the system and violate the spirit of the law is punished.
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 09:35 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: re: bouncing all requests to the courts
ratfox,
It's not a bug or loophole. Google don't have to take any decisions they don't want to. They can boot them all to the national data watchdog. And then go on their rulings. No lawyers are required for that process.
I agree that if they appeal all those rulings, the courts will soon get grumpy with them, and start slapping them down. But no-one will object if they appeal anything that has wider implications. And I assume that it'll be an appeal against the watchdogs' decisions, so it'll have to be them who lawyer-up, not the original complainants.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 13:20 GMT Eguro
True to a point.
That point being when Google - doing this as standard - winds up with the inferior search engine.
"All I can find on Google about person X is that he's a fine upstanding citizen. Yet Bing/Yahoo/Duckduckgo/Startpage etc. etc. give me info about that scandal a few years ago. I knew I hadn't gone senile - I did recall X being involved in a prostitution ring."
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 13:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Is it me who doesn't understand how things work, or is it the Judges, Lawyers and EU politicians?
Google will only index pages that contain the disputed information. Once those pages are removed (after a short delay) Google will no longer index them.
So, rather than going after Google to remove the indexing, why aren't people getting the content of the relevant pages removed?
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 14:13 GMT James 100
Rather absurdly, the pages themselves are allowed to stay unmolested - it's just Google's index of pages which must - potentially - be mutilated to comply with Euro-demands.
I'm not a big fan of Google, but I can't find any room for sympathy with demands to change their index, whether for copyright reasons or "privacy rights": if there is an article on The Reg about Bill Gates molesting sheep, or there's a copy of Windows 8 at example.com/warez/win8.iso, why on earth should Google be compelled to keep quiet about that fact? Taking down the actual page/file, fine - but I object on principle to editing the index to pretend the content isn't there when it is.
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 11:10 GMT Andrew Orlowski
"Taking down the actual page/file, fine"
That's censoring the press. Literally.
If you read the ruling, the justification for the decision is explained really simply and clearly. Hint: massive reputational damage infringes a citizens privacy. A newspaper or Lexis doesn't have the same societal impact.
I'm intrigued that in the age of mass electronic surveillance, you put "privacy rights" in scare quotes. GCHQ will be happy to read that.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 14:13 GMT big_D
Because they are often public record and therefore cannot be removed.
The problem is that the information is available on the internet...
In the past, a newspaper displayed a story with a short shelf life, after a few days or weeks, it became hard to find and that was fine in many cases, because the information was no longer relevant.
Public interest material would be regurgitated or migrate to periodicals and if very relevant would be archived in libraries, inlcuded in reference works etc.
Finding that 20 year old debt story, which no longer has any legal relevance would be possible, but hard work, which is at it should be.
With the internet, it is as easy to find now as it was 20 years ago... That is the problem, Google just brings up what it thinks is relevant, whether the information is legally allowed to be relevant or not.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 14:19 GMT DragonLord
because the published content falls under a different set of laws that applies to publishers rather than data processors.
In this instance google falls under the dataprocessing aspect of the dataprotection act. That means that they have a duty to ensure that the data that they hold and process is accurate and up to date. (This is existing law rather than the new right to be forgotten). News papers, blogs, et al, don't need to abide by this as they aren't processing data they are producing information. Thus the article that's sitting in their archive is the same one as it was when it was published.
The reason for the difference is (I think) to avoid post publication censorship by those in power.
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 06:38 GMT tom dial
"[Data processors] have a duty to ensure that the data that they hold and process is accurate and up to date"
It does not seem that they were accused of failing to do that. The complaint appears to have been that they did, in fact, present an accurate and up to date extract of data found on La Vanguardia's web site describing the auction for back taxes of property owned by Mario Costeja González. The "problem" was not inaccuracy, but that it was old, and the subject didn't like it. The Spanish court, rather than take the sensible approach of ordering La Vanguardia to stop its continual republication or at least indicate to Google that it should not be indexed, instead ordered Google to make it less findable.
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 09:03 GMT Andrew Orlowski
" Spanish court, rather than take the sensible approach of ordering La Vanguardia to stop its continual republication or at least indicate to Google that it should not be indexed, instead ordered Google to make it less findable."
This doesn't make sense. 'Less findable vs. not indexed' is a distinction without a difference.
I am puzzled why you think suppressing a free press was preferable? Then the Vanguardia article couldn't be read anywhere. Not even on Vanguardia's own site.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 13:01 GMT Jim 59
Goos article
Good article.
Tiny point:
Google has flooded Brussels with lobbyists, but this may not be an adequate response to regulators on a continent growing weary of what is more and more perceived as US arrogance
I would say Silicon Valley arrogance instead. The arrogance of Google, Facebook and their chums is just as annoying to US citizens as it is to us.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 13:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
At least Google no longer tries to declare itself exempt
That Google isn't exempt from EU privacy laws became evident during the Streetview scandal, so the fact that they tried that one speaks volume of its opinion of EU officials.
I'm undecided on the "right to forget" thing - I think there ought to be some control over it so it cannot be used for stupid stuff, but can be court mandated. That also puts some barriers on it, but gives a handle in case malicious slander is affecting someone's life. But I haven't thought that one through yet.
What IS important is that Google is brought under control. At the moment it uses its international structure to mostly ignore law, so making it at least accountable is not a bad move IMHO.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 14:17 GMT diodesign
Re: TopOnePercent
"simply disappearing from this story?"
No comments have been rejected AFAICT ... and we reserve the right to pre-mod comments on certain articles, subjects, authors, etc. Meta-discussion can be safely done in the feedback forums, ta.
C.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 14:17 GMT Stretch
None of this is about US arrogance, or Google doing evil, or any other partisan position.
The point is the ruling is just damn, damn, damn stupid. I mean really, completely idiotic. Its the sort of perverse and illogical decision produced the heavily lobbied and badly misinformed. It is simply legal revisionism, and will only benefit criminals.
For those of you too young to remember, there was no internet before Google. Seriously. You remember trying to actually FIND anything pre-google? No chance. If you didn't know the web page address then you simply weren't going there. Do you remember the dumb ass programs you had to use to "submit" your site to huge lists of "search engines" with pages and pages of faked up meta data (this used to be SEO you know...)?
So Google gave us a working internet. Then they gave us working email with storage greater than 2MB. And then when fucking crapple stole, ahem, "invented", the mobile phone they gave us an operating system that meant we could stick our finger up at the fucking fanbois.
And I've never paid them a penny. And I have a famous person "masking" me in search results. There is no downside. APART from these idiotic "non-technicals" (and that is the most damning insult there is IMO) trying to fuck with things that don't concern them.
Frankly if the Germans don't like it they can block Google. And see how far that gets them.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 15:57 GMT John Lilburne
They can block Google
When a French ISP did that Google whined all the way to the top of the French government. Personally I think we should give this quasi-criminal* company the finger, and block it entirely from the EU.
*
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2014/01/17/how-a-500-million-fine-paid-by-google-for-selling-illegal-drugs-on-the-web-is-used-for-retiremernt-benefits-rhode-island-police/
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They have been inserting little memes in everybody's mind. So Google's shills can shriek there whenever they're inclined
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 11:02 GMT Andrew Orlowski
A/C: I can see you love this corporation deeply, but I don't think "I love Google, and want its children" is a very persuasive argument for rewriting data protection and privacy laws that some countries care very strongly about, simply so that corporation can evade them.
Best of luck trying, though. I'd brush up on my French and German if I were you.
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Thursday 19th June 2014 08:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
there was no internet before Google
Seriously? Before the whole knighthood-generating URL idea we had Archie and Gopher, and even when the www concept took off we had a number of services such as Altavista, Wolfram Alpha etc., and those resources still exist. Later outfits like Xahoo did the same, and then there is the wannabee service Bing.
Google did effectively an iPhone on that market: take what existed and made it usable. This is IMHO the one genuine innovation they brought: their search ranking algorithm is still by far the best, which allowed them to become the gateway to information. The rest of your adulation, however, is undeserved. They are not making the Internet, their privacy violating data sucking is /breaking/ it.
It has, however, not created the Internet and frankly, I'm astonished you can even make such a claim.
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 14:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Very Naive
If you really think that the ICO will put up with 50,000 requests for the removal of data to be adjudicated every month then I think you need to re-evaluate.
In a similar way to PPI refunding and banks will be expected to process all claims, even though they have the right to reject them and send them back to the adjudicator.
Every lawyer will see it as a bonanza and be putting the requests in to Google and then taking it to court citing case law.
Radio adverts will be springing up on the radio and TV "ever had details put on the web that you want to remove, ring we-remove-it and sons, you could get £3000 in compensation"..
Whether you have any sympathies with Google, Microsoft etc you can't be surprised that they might not want to have to service this scheme.
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 10:57 GMT Andrew Orlowski
Re: Very Naive
A/C: "If you really think that the ICO will put up with 50,000 requests for the removal of data to be adjudicated every month..."
The uncorroborated figure of 40,000 that Google quoted was for the entire EU. The most requests came from Germany. As we have pointed out, the media reporting gave them the false impression that they merely had to ask and Google would remove.
The ICO rejects thousands of requests already.
You can guesstimate the cost to Google of *complying with the law* quite easily. Then compare it against Google's profits, the amount of tax it has avoided, etc.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 15:21 GMT Daggerchild
In other mildly related news:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/06/17/1230253/canadian-court-orders-google-to-remove-websites-from-its-global-index
Judge: "I will address here Google's submission that this analysis would give every state in the world jurisdiction over Google’s search services. That may be so. But if so, it flows as a natural consequence of Google doing business on a global scale, not from a flaw in the territorial competence analysis."
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 20:26 GMT ratfox
Re: In other mildly related news:
I think the flaw in this particular ruling can be more clearly explained as: "China would like nobody to be able to search for the Tienanmen incident". Should it be censored for the whole world because Google happens to also do business in China…? According to this Canadian judge, it should.
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 06:38 GMT tom dial
Re: In other mildly related news:
I did not read into the summaries I saw that Google would have to "forget" things in the US that were ordered "forgotten" in the EC. They might do that, out of convenience, my impression is that they do not have to. If the order was for world wide "forgetting" of "obsolete or no longer relevant" pages, it is as asinine as orders by US judges that purport to apply US law to internet activities outside the US.
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 16:19 GMT Frankee Llonnygog
Maybe Google could request that in the EU ...
All companies are people and all people are companies. That way, companies could request that all their dealings be forgotten while people would be subject to transparency regulations. However, it would also mean that Google could be stopped and searched in the street - they might now like being the victims of dodgy search practices
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Tuesday 17th June 2014 20:26 GMT Ed Coyne
Missing the point
It seems to be simply misdirected. If you want to censor the information then you should pass a law allowing you to censor the source of the information. Why would you censor the middleman? The only reason I can think of is that censoring newspapers has a long history and is unpopular while censoring search engines is new and you can get away with it.
You mention you can still get the information from lexis-nexis, is that not still a search engine? Would it not be forced to comply with the same requests?
I understand that the crux of this debate is the law already exists so it must be followed now (which it is) but why is it a problem to try and change those laws. That is the point of democracy no? A process to change broken laws?
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Wednesday 18th June 2014 10:18 GMT DragonLord
Re: Missing the point
Because if you censor the source then it becomes impossible to trust that there is a fair, unbiased and not state controlled press. If the source is allowed to stay, but the means of finding said source becomes more and more burdensome as time goes on. Then it protects peoples privacy in a general sense as the article isn't showing up as fresh all the time while preserving it for the future when a relative or researcher may come across it while searching in the archives.
Also, the article itself isn't damaging sitting there in the archive. It's only damaging to the persons current reputation because it has been processed by a search engine and brought into the lime light during a search.
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