Google Seeks Help from Wikipedia’s Wales to Weigh “Right to be Forgotten”

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia co-founder said that he plans to have a new Google advisory committee assign on privacy to be seen as blue-ribbon panel taken seriously by lawmakers to guide public policy. Last Thursday, Wales was named as one of the seven members of the committee. This move is part of the company’s plan to comply with an EU court order to scan personal information from search result upon request.

He said in an interview with the Journal that, “In my view, our role is not just to recommend things to Google, but also to recommend to the public and to legislators.” Wales added, “Here’s a framework, here’s some ideas regulators should consider.” For him, there is an advantage in preventing some fact to be available online. He gave emphasis to this matter, the same way Google tried to explain on Friday.

“There are some compromises possible,” Wales said. “We can begin to be a little more intellectual about what constitutes private data.”

Wales gave an example that those architectural floor plans for houses in Florida should not be shown online even if it’s a state with liberal public information policies. “It’s not at all clear to me what the public benefit is of putting a burglary map together for everybody,” he said.

The government should be responsible with security not Google, Wales said. This method is closer to one Google has done in the past, arguing that they are only information intermediaries.

“Everyone would like to have all these elements: privacy, transparency, the right to be forgotten, the right to know,” Floridi said, he is a committee member and philosopher at the Oxford Internet Institute. “The trouble is that once you put them in the same system, you start looking at compromises.”

Wales said he wasn’t sure whether Google would totally follow the committee’s recommendations, which are expected out in 2015. He was not sure how or when the group would meet–whether it will be in person, over the phone or even in a Google Hangout.

“Hopefully it will be a group that will be looking for some solutions that are a step forward that people on all sides can agree will be a useable set of recommendations,” he said.