- That people who want their data removed are criminals. That's hugely not the case. Does a teenager who was plastered all over social media / newspapers have to change his/her name because someone targeted abuse at him/her?
- Even if they were jailed for a transgression, they paid their part to the socienty. For serious transgressions, the authorities keeps tabs on them. For non-serious things, why does it matter? They paid their part.
GP is not assuming anything. Literally the first paragraph in the post:
> The man, who has not been named due to reporting restrictions surrounding the case, wanted search results about a past crime he had committed removed from the search engine.
Any example of somebody being abused/targeted and Google refusing to remove them from search results? The only cases where they fought back were people trying to hide their criminal record (most often politicians, white collar crime).
You need to convince a judge that you have a "good reason". France has only recently loosened its restrictions on what names people are allowed to have.
In some countries that's very hard to do. But why should you? If you committed a crime and spent your time in jail, why shouldn't you get a second chance? There are certain jobs that you cannot take depending on the crime you committed (esp working with children) but for most jobs it should be absolutely irrelevant if you committed a crime in the past.
Varies by country. Germany normally forbids changes except by marriage/divorce (I think), while the UK doesn’t really have legal names, just lots of databases run by people who want an official-looking document before they update anything (and even then my university will just refuse to reprint degree certificates with a new name).
I mean, you're assuming two things:
- That people who want their data removed are criminals. That's hugely not the case. Does a teenager who was plastered all over social media / newspapers have to change his/her name because someone targeted abuse at him/her?
- Even if they were jailed for a transgression, they paid their part to the socienty. For serious transgressions, the authorities keeps tabs on them. For non-serious things, why does it matter? They paid their part.