We have met the enemy and he is us.
The creator of the brilliant comic strip Pogo, Walt Kelly, expanded on the quote in a foreword to one of his books in 1953: “Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle. There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us. Forward!”
I wonder how Kelly would have drawn us today, a society which not so long ago purported to value our privacy, and which now hands over our personal information with impunity. Not to real people, of course, but to the Internet, that vast, spidery network of operations large and tiny, all doggedly asking for, getting and collecting information about us.
In recent months, I have come to think of this collection of data as being akin to the dog that chases a car. It has no idea what it’s going to do if it actually catches it.
In the same week in which we have heard growing concern about the Canadian government and its agencies amassing data about individual citizens — with not the slightest idea of what it might do with it — another story caught my attention.
A European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that individuals have the right to have information deleted about them from online databases. The decision raises more questions than answers, though.
The case started in Spain, where a man sued Google for infringing on his privacy because a search of his name brought up an auction notice of his repossessed home from 16 years ago, according to a National Public Radio report from the U.S. The man argued, reasonably enough, that the matter had been resolved and should no longer be linked to him when his name was searched in Google. Erasing his digital footprint seems like a small victory. But.
In its defense, Google argued that search engines don’t control data, but simply link to information that is already there. Google and other search engines are the modern equivalent of a common feature of libraries of the not so distant past — the card catalogue. The card catalogue didn’t contain much information, but it directed you to where you could find it.
In its finding, the court ruled that people could request removal of data related to them that seems to be “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.”
So far, so good. But the court also acknowledged that search engines are “searching automatically, constantly and systematically for information” that they collect, organize and disclose to Internet users.
That is an important consideration, because the court also turned down the lawsuit’s request to have the original newspaper report that turns up in the Google search expunged. Why? Because the information was correct when it was printed.
And of course the court had to rule in that way, because that part of the request is tantamount to asking for permission to change history. It is something we all might like to do at one time or another, but it’s mostly silly to even think of as being possible.
So this court has said that the producer of the modern card catalogue must now remove cards at the request of any of the six billion or so makers of personal history on the planet. Good luck with that.
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.