Is there legal obligation for Google to link to Court of Appeal Judgments about spent convictions
There is no legal obligation for Google to provide links to Court of Appeal judgments concerning spent convictions. This is due to the fact that the right to data protection is an inherent right which should be respected and upheld.
Does a right to be forgotten apply to sex offending convictions
Is it possible to delist news articles from the Daily Telegraph
Can you delist Court of Appeal decisions from Google
How does the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act apply to the right to be forgotten
Can you delist Court of Appeal decisions from The Courts and Tribunal Service website
Does a right to be forgotten apply to sex offending convictions
Yes. The right to be forgotten applies to all types of criminal convictions, including to sex offences. When our client was in his early 20s, whilst heavily intoxicated, he shared an explicit picture of a woman on Facebook. When he realised what he did on the following morning he deleted the image but the matter was already in the hands of the police. He had to face the consequences of his actions. He was taken to court and given a prison sentence which following an appeal to the Court of Appeal, was reduced to a short-term Community Service Order together with an order to be placed on the Sex Offender Register for two years.
However, our client’s conviction continued to haunt him even six years later. Whenever his name was searched on Google along with the name of his town and the word conviction, articles about his past mistake would appear on the search results. This caused him great distress as he felt embarrassed to meet new people or even apply for jobs. Eventually, he decided to seek the help of a law firm that specialised in delisting URLs from Google. He approached our firm with little hope that the matter would be successfully resolved for him as the news reporting on his conviction had become almost an integral part of his life.
Having listened to his concerns, we decided to draft a comprehensive right to be forgotten request to Google. The right to be forgotten request highlighted the fact that the man had completed his community service and was considered rehabilitated under the law. It also included mitigating circumstances, such as the man's remorse for his actions, the lack of subsequent offending and details of the psychological damage the 5 years of seclusion had caused him.
Is it possible to delist news articles from the Daily Telegraph
Yes. Google is obliged to delist news articles that appear in the Daily Telegraph even though, the online version of the Telegraph is placed behind a paywall (you must pay to read the full article). In our clients’ case, Google acted promptly on the matter and agreed to delist most of the URLs from its search results on the same day the right to be forgotten request was submitted by our lawyers.
However, there were some challenges that the firm had to overcome. Google initially refused to delist certain articles from a national newspaper, the Daily Telegraph because the articles were placed under a paywall. Google claimed that they were not obliged to remove or delist news articles under a paywall. After some arguments, Google accepted the firm’s submission that even when news articles are hidden behind a paywall, they should still be delisted from Google searches because Google still shows a snippet of the articles and still lists them for relevant searches.
Can you delist Court of Appeal decisions from Google
Yes. You can delist links to decisions made by the Court of Appeal from Google searches in relation to your name. In our client’s case, Google initially refused to delist the Court of Appeal's judgment from Google search results. The judgement appeared on the Scottish Courts and Tribunals website but was also accessible through Google search results for searches of our client’s name. In their refusal to delist the Court of Appeal judgement, Google claimed that as the publication was on an official Government website, Google was not obliged to have the judgment delisted from search results. Google argument was that official government records play a vital role in keeping society informed of matters which the government considers to be of public interest.
However, whilst technically this is correct, it is not essential for Court of Appeal judgements to appear on Google searches in relation to the appellant’s name. The Court of Appeal judgments already appear, in a searchable format, on the Court of Appeal website and as such, the public interest is being served without a disproportionate impact on the individual’s right to private life. Old criminal convictions, to which the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act apply, are considered “spent” convictions and as such are private matters which should not be searchable on Google search.
How does the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act apply to the right to be forgotten
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 exists to support the rehabilitation (of the data subject) into society. Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, following a specified period of time which varies according to the disposal administered or sentence passed, all cautions and convictions (except those resulting in prison sentences of over 30 months) are regarded as “spent”. As a result, the offender (the data subject here) is regarded as rehabilitated.
For most purposes, the Act treats a rehabilitated person as if he or she had never committed an offence and, as such, they are not obliged to declare their caution(s) or conviction(s), for example, when applying for employment or insurance. Therefore, the data subject is not required to declare his conviction when applying for employment or insurance.
When Google still processes links to publications which report the criminal conviction despite the criminal conviction being considered as spent, there is a real risk that this results in a breach of the rights to private life and the right to a fair processing of data by the data subject.
Can you delist Court of Appeal decisions from The Courts and Tribunal Service website
Some Government agencies do not remove from their website past judgements. Others do remove judgments after a sentence has been completed, a conviction was spent, or a disciplinary order had been completed. The Courts and Tribunal Service tend to keep and publish Court of Appeal judgments on its own website due to various public records keeping laws. Whilst the government’s decision to keep publishing a public record may indicate ongoing public interest in the matter, the public interest is usually maintained by the government's public record keeping which means that there is no need for Google to effectively maintain a similar record.
In the case of Courts and Tribunal Service, there is a positive requirement to keep accessible pubic records of Court of Appeal judgments. There is no similar requirement which applies to Google which means we can successfully require Google to remove links to The Courts and Tribunal Service judgments in relation to Google searches for the individual’s name. Google is under no legal obligation to provide links to public records of spent criminal convictions even if details of a conviction still appear on The Courts and Tribunal Service.
