Should Google Sensor Search Results?
Brick technology web design always wants to keep our customers and other visitors up to date with the latest goings on in the world of technology. The latest item which has arisen is that MP’s want to force Google to censor their search results but should they?
The idea of forcing search engines to sensor their results has come from The Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions who has recommended that Google and other search engines should be forced into screening their search results so that they can minimise the possibility of breaching privacy.
Google has however come back and said that realistically they cannot apply privacy filters which would screen their results accurately. They said that rather than missing results from their search they are going to not cencor at all. Unfortunately the panel of MPs has found their comeback very unconvincing and are still in discusssions over this.
The panel has been set up following last years super injunctions whereby well known social networking site Twitter and the also the Internet laughed in the faces of a number of celebrities ordering them to be “gagged”. One of the celebrities affected by the lack of “gaggin” was footballer Ryan Giggs.
How the censoring would work is unclear but what is pretty clear is that there will be a number of people completely against the censoring who will claim that this removing search engines of their freedom of expression.
Google has obviously objected to the request but if they pass it as a law then they may well be forced into it. The legal right to privacy does exist for a valid reason although for some celebrities who get up to naughty things like drunk taking, drink driving and cheating and then abuse injunctions then maybe they deserve to have it plastered on the internet.
Injunctions aren’t always a bad thing though and this is important, genuine people do have their privacy protected because otherwise they may not be treat fairly if information or their particular situation was brought to public attention.
The panel wants court charges to be brought against anyone who referrs to a specific privacy issue on Facebook or Twitter after around 75,000 named Ryan Giggs as the footballer which newspapers were not allowed to mention.
It isnt just Google that the panel have attacked though, newspapers too have been threatened by the Press Complaints Commission and told that it needs to tighten things up.
Brick technology would like to know what you think about Google censoring their search results. Is it a good thing or should they not be forced into censoring and give people the right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression?