MATTHEW HAMMOND
Aspiring Social Studies Teacher,
former Antitrust Enforcer & Dad
The Northern Lights near Reykjavík, Iceland (Feb. 2023, MCHammond)
Let's get started!
Have you ever ego-surfed—that is, put your own name into the search box on an internet search engine to see what is returned? Are you worried about what might come up? Is there anything you are worried that a future employer may find? Or a college admissions officer? Or your future partner?
Should you be able to stop a search engine from returning certain information about you when someone searches on your name?
The European Union (EU) says, "Yes."
Since 2014, Google and Bing have reviewed over 1.7 million requests to delist over 6.5 million URLs (web addresses) from their search results. They have delisted nearly half of the URLs requested. Those URLs can still appear in response to to searches that do not include the requester's name, but now in the EU searches on a person's name may be incomplete.
Should the right to be forgotten be brought to the United States?
In the EU, a person can request that Google or Bing (and other online platforms) not include links on their search-engine results page to specific webpages whenever anyone searches on your name. They call it the "right to be forgotten."
It all started when a man in Spain sued Google because a search on his name returned a link to a newspaper notice about selling his house in a
You've just been hired, along with 3 of your colleagues, to look at this question and recommend an answer.
Your new boss is member of the Congress who wants to know what position she should take on the right to be forgotten. She has asked you to research the issue, brief her on it, and create an issue ad that she can run in support of her position in the next election.
bankruptcy auction, because he could not pay his debts. He felt it violated his privacy to show he had been in bankruptcy 10 years earlier. In 2014, the European Court of Justice agreed.
Watch the first 2 minutes and 17 seconds of this video from Google for an overview, and then move on to the Task page.
Remember to stop at 2:17.
Use the form to the right to ask a quick question.
This form is on every page of Operation Lethe.
Why Lethe?
-
In Classical Greek, the word lethe (λήθη) literally means "forgetting," "forgetfulness."
-
In Greek mythology, Lethe was the personification of forgetfulness and oblivion.
-
Lethe was also the name of a river in the Underworld. If a deceased person drank from the River Lethe, they would forgot all of the memories of their life. The River Lethe was also known as the river of unmindfulness.
If you're not sure how to pronounce
Lethe, click on this short video.
Credit: Google.com
© 2024 Matthew C. Hammond