This article is more than 1 year old

Google to 'forget me' man: Have you forgotten what you said earlier?

To forget, or not to forget? That is the question

Let him ‘get on with his life’

“It is important to be clear throughout that this is not a case about Google’s freedom of expression. Google does not assert any freedom of expression rights of its own in relation to the listing of search results,” said Hugh Tomlinson QC, NT2’s barrister, giving his own summing-up speech to the court after White.

“The impact [of deleting the search results] is only on the ability of the public to obtain access to this information using Google,” continued the Matrix Chambers barrister. “The public are still able to access the information. The writers of the articles are still talking about freedom of expression. We’re talking only about restricting access in one particular way.”

Tomlinson’s summary of his arguments for deleting the search results was that while it should be legally possible for the court to leave references to spent convictions online, the case for doing that would have to be “something that weighs very heavily” against deletion – though he did concede: “If it contains something trivial and the public interest in the up-to-date material is serious, that is going to be a very strong factor against delisting.”

A large amount of the legal back-and-forth focused on the nature of NT2’s conviction and its relevance to his present-day activities. We are unable to tell you any of the detail of what was argued on that point because that would give away enough for NT2 to be identified.

As for the interviews that NT2 gave about the circumstances of his offence, Tomlinson observed that before the days of the "right to be forgotten" (which was established by an EU court in 2014), the only way of getting embarrassing information off the top of search engines was to produce fresh material to push it out of sight.

"In those days, as it were, post-internet but pre-Right-To-Be-Forgotten, if you had material which came on the internet, the only possible way of reducing its prominence was by search engine optimisation techniques. In other words, by putting other material on, getting higher up the search rankings than what was there.” – Hugh Tomlinson QC

While he accepted that a correction which NT2 had asked to be added to one of the articles was “incorrect”, Tomlinson denied that “that was an untrue or a misleading attempt by him”. Google has claimed, among other things, that both NT1 and NT2 are trying to “rewrite history”.

He also argued that in spite of NT2 being convicted of conspiracy to intercept communications, “we don’t actually know” whether the conspiracy “produced anything of value to anybody”, using this to claim that NT2 may not have made an actual gain from his crime – thereby making public awareness of it less important.

“The time has passed, the conviction has receded into the past,” said Tomlinson, “and we say that is the crucial factor... from his point of view the best course by far is for these [results] to be delisted so he can put his past behind him and get on with his life.”

Legal arguments in the case have now ended. The public judgement for both NT1 and NT2’s cases is expected to be handed down at the end of this month.

Bootnote

*A reporting restriction order is in place that bans the naming of NT2 and of his businesses. It is very similar to the one in force for linked case NT1 v Google Inc, which we wrote about here. Even though legal arguments have ended, the order remains in force for now.

White, barrister for Google, also said: “We have the gentleman from The Register in court... that journal [is] widely read in the tech sector.” Your correspondent was the only journalist present for large parts of both cases.

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like