GOOG Alphabet Inc

   By Sam Schechner 
 

Britain's privacy watchdog wants the right to forget the "Streisand Effect."

The U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office on Thursday ordered Google Inc. to remove links to a flurry of news stories that detailed one of the first cases in which the search engine had granted a removal under Europe's new right to be forgotten.

The removal in question appears to be that of a story about a decade-old shoplifting conviction, according to details supplied in the order. It was one of several removals that came to light in the wake of the May 2014 decision by the European Union's top court to create the new right which gives European residents the ability to request that search engines uncouple links containing outdated or irrelevant personal information from searches for their own names.

The removals became public because Google insists on notifying websites when links are removed, and many news organizations - including the Wall Street Journal - published accounts of those removals, in effect creating new attention for information the initial requesters had wanted removed, something known as the Streisand Effect.

Thursday's order, while it applies only in the U.K., could provide an example for other countries, potentially provoking a new wave of takedown requests of stories about takedown requests, and a subsequent wave of stories about those new requests. That will also give ammunition to both free speech advocates and privacy activists in their tussle over where to draw the line between privacy and the public's right to know-and whether Google should be notifying websites of removals under the right to be forgotten.

The ICO said Thursday's case concerns an individual who was convicted of a petty crime nearly a decade ago. After Google agreed to remove a link to a story about that conviction from search results for the individual's name, the original publication wrote about the removal - and that story was picked up by several other outlets, the ICO said.

When the individual asked Google to remove those links, too, the search engine refused, saying the new stories were about an important news event. But the ICO disagreed with that logic, saying the public interest in the right to be forgotten could easily be satisfied with Google searches for things other than the name of the individual, who was not a prominent figure.

"We understand that links being removed as a result of this court ruling is something that newspapers want to write about. And we understand that people need to be able to find these stories through search engines like Google. But that does not need them to be revealed when searching on the original complainant's name," said David Smith, deputy commissioner at the ICO.

The ICO did not name the individual, nor the publication, but gave some details of the case, including the specific sentence the individual received. Those details match a story from the Oxford Mail about a man convicted of shoplifting in 2006. That story itself became the subject of a large number of articles in July 2014 after the man successfully lobbied Google to remove it from his search results in Europe.

The ICO declined to comment whether that was the case in question, and Google did not immediately have any comment.

The Oxford Mail, for its part, did not know if its story was the one referenced in the case, but argued that it will resist removals even of stories about petty crimes.

"Convicted criminals [are] attempting to erase all trace of their deeds from the public eye and the European Court and ICO are actively aiding and abetting them," said Simon O'Neill, group editor of the Oxford Mail and the Oxford Times. "Some are petty thieves and people with relatively minor convictions. But there are also serious offenders using this as a smokescreen for their horrible deeds."

Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 20, 2015 14:58 ET (18:58 GMT)

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