Google Fights Businessman's Attempt to Erase Conviction Links
Posted in: UncategorizedGoogle is fighting a businessman in a London court over whether people have the right to purge old convictions from online search results in the U.K.’s first so-called “right to be forgotten” trial.
The man, who can’t be identified by name because of a court order, wants Google to remove links about being found guilty in a false accountancy conspiracy in the late 1990s. Under English law designed to rehabilitate offenders, that conviction doesn’t have to be disclosed to potential employers and can effectively be ignored.
A Google search brings up the information “through a few key strokes,” undermining the law about such spent convictions, Hugh Tomlinson, a lawyer for the complainant, told a court hearing on Tuesday. “Google facilitates information that would otherwise be hard to find.”