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Consumer Watchdog Presses FTC On Google’s Refusal To Honor The ‘Right To Be Forgotten’

Consumer Watchdog submitted a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission stating that search giant Google should offer a “right to be forgotten” policy in the United States as they do in Europe.

In a letter to the FTC, the organization stated that Google’s “refusal to honor the right and consider such removal requests in the U.S. while holding itself out to be concerned about users’ privacy is both unfair and deceptive” and violates FTC provisions, according to Investors.com.

The letter referenced that Google violates the “right of relevancy” provision of the Fair Credit Reporting Act in the United States, which requires information about debt collections, civil lawsuits, tax liens and arrest records to be removed from consumer reports after seven years.

John Simpson, president of Consumer Watchdog, was quoted as saying that Google allowing Europeans to request that links be removed but not in the U.S. is “an unfair practice.”

Not offering Americans a basic privacy tool, while providing it to millions of users across Europe, is an unfair practice (…) Google’s own experience in Europe demonstrates that Right To Be Forgotten removal requests can be managed in a way that is fair and not burdensome for Google.

The European Court of Justice passed a ruling on May 13, 2014 that allows European citizens to request that information that is “inaccurate, irrelevant, inadequate or excessive” to be removed from search engine results, according to NBC News.

In other news, Google’s neural network has produced some trippy computer generated art.

So what do you think about the “Right to be Forgotten?”

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