Sacred Heart Tomasi Neg Apple Valley RR Round6

Neg v Gina Sacred Heart High School

1

Revisionary intuitionism is true and leads to util.Yudkowsky 8 writes1

I haven't said much about metaethics - the nature of morality - because that has a forward dependency on a discussion of the Mind Projection Fallacy that I haven't gotten to yet. I used to be very confused about metaethics. After my confusion finally cleared up, I did a postmortem on my previous

thoughts. I found that my object-level moral reasoning had been valuable and my meta-level moral reasoning had been worse than useless. And this appears to be a general syndrome - people do much better when discussing whether torture is good or bad than when they discuss the meaning of "good" and "bad". Thus, I deem it prudent to keep moral discussions on the object level wherever I possibly can. Occasionally people object to

any discussion of morality on the grounds that morality doesn't exist, and in lieu of jumping over the forward

dependency to explain that "exist" is not the right term to use here, I generally say, "But what do you do anyway?" and take the discussion back down to the object level. Paul Gowder, though, has pointed out that both the idea of choosing a googolplex dust specks in a googolplex eyes over 50 years of torture for one person, and the idea of "utilitarianism", depend on "intuition". He says I've argued that the two are not compatible, but charges me with failing to argue for the utilitarian intuitions that I appeal to. Now "intuition" is not how I would describe the computations that underlie human morality and distinguish us, as moralists, from an ideal philosopher of perfect emptiness and/or a rock. But I am okay with using the word "intuition" as a term of art, bearing in mind that "intuition" in this sense is not to be contrasted to reason, but is, rather, the cognitive building block out of which both long verbal arguments

and fast perceptual arguments are constructed. I see the project of morality as a project of renormalizing intuition. We have intuitions about things that seem desirable or undesirable, intuitions about actions that are right or wrong, intuitions about how to resolve conflicting intuitions, intuitions about how to systematize specific intuitions into general principles.

Delete all the intuitions, and you aren't left with an ideal philosopher of perfect emptiness, you're left with a rock. Keep all your specific intuitions and refuse to build upon the reflective ones, and you aren't

left with an ideal philosopher of perfect spontaneity and genuineness, you're left with a grunting caveperson running in circles, due to cyclical preferences and similar inconsistencies. "Intuition", as a term of art, is not a curse word when it comes to morality - there is

nothing else to argue from. Even modus ponens is an "intuition" in this sense - it's just that modus

ponens still seems like a good idea after being formalized, reflected on, extrapolated out to see if it has sensible consequences, etcetera. So that is "intuition". However, Gowder did not say what he meant by "utilitarianism". Does utilitarianism say... That right actions are strictly determined by good consequences? That praiseworthy actions depend on justifiable expectations of good consequences? That probabilities of consequences should normatively be discounted by their probability, so that a 50% probability of something bad should weigh exactly half as much in our tradeoffs? That virtuous actions always correspond to maximizing expected utility under some utility function? That two harmful events are worse than one? That two independent occurrences of a harm (not to the same person, not interacting with each other) are exactly twice as bad as one? That for any two harms A and B, with A much worse than B, there exists some tiny probability such that gambling on this probability of A is preferable to a certainty of B? If you say that I advocate something, or that my argument depends on something, and that it is wrong, do please specify what this thingy is... anyway, I accept 3, 5, 6, and 7, but not 4; I am not sure about the phrasing of 1; and 2 is true, I guess, but phrased in a rather solipsistic and selfish fashion: you should not worry about being praiseworthy. Now, what are the "intuitions" upon which my "utilitarianism" depends? This is a deepish sort of topic, but I'll take a quick stab at it. First of all, it's not just that someone presented me with a list of

statements like those above, and I decided which ones sounded "intuitive". Among other things, if you try to violate

"utilitarianism", you run into paradoxes, contradictions, circular preferences, and other

things that aren't symptoms of moral wrongness so much as moral incoherence. After you think about moral problems for a while, and also find new truths about the world, and even discover disturbing facts about how you yourself work, you often end up with different moral opinions than when you started out. This does not quite define moral progress, but it is how we experience moral progress. As part of my experienced moral progress, I've drawn a conceptual separation between questions of type Where should we go? and questions of type How should we get there? (Could that be what Gowder means by saying I'm "utilitarian"?) The question of where a road goes - where it leads - you can answer by traveling the road and finding out. If you have a false belief about where the road leads, this falsity can be destroyed by the truth in a very direct and straightforward manner. When it comes to wanting to go to a particular place, this want is not entirely immune from the destructive powers of truth. You could go there and find that you regret it afterward (which does not define moral error, but is how we experience moral error). But, even so, wanting to be in a particular place seems worth distinguishing from wanting to take a particular road to a particular place. Our intuitions about where

to go are arguable enough, but our intuitions about how to get there are frankly messed up. After the two hundred and eighty-seventh

research study showing that people will chop their own feet off if you frame the problem the wrong way, you start to distrust first impressions. When you've read enough research on scope insensitivity - people will pay only 28% more to protect all 57 wilderness areas in Ontario than one area, people will pay

1 Eliezer Yudkowsky (research fellow of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute; he also writes Harry Potter fan fiction). “The ‘Intuitions’ Behind ‘Utilitarianism.’” 28 January 2008. LessWrong. http://lesswrong.com/lw/n9/the_intuitions_behind_utilitarianism/


the same amount to save 50,000 lives as 5,000 lives... that sort of thing... Well, the worst case of scope insensitivity I've ever heard of was described here by Slovic: Other recent research shows similar results. Two Israeli psychologists asked people to contribute to a costly life-saving treatment. They could offer that contribution to a group of eight sick children, or to an individual child selected from the group. The target amount needed to save the child (or children) was the same in both cases. Contributions to individual group members far outweighed the contributions to the entire group. There's other research along similar lines, but I'm just presenting one example, 'cause, y'know, eight examples would probably have less impact. If you know the general experimental paradigm, then the reason for the above behavior is pretty obvious - focusing your attention on a single child creates more emotional arousal than trying to distribute attention around eight children

simultaneously. So people are willing to pay more to help one child than to help eight. Now, you could look at this intuition, and think it was revealing some kind of incredibly deep moral truth which shows that one child's good fortune is somehow devalued by the other children's good fortune. But what about the billions of other children in the world? Why isn't it a bad idea to help this one child, when that causes the value of all the other children to go down? How can it be significantly better to have 1,329,342,410 happy children than

1,329,342,409, but then somewhat worse to have seven more at 1,329,342,417? Or you could look at that and say: "The intuition is wrong: the brain can't successfully multiply by eight and get a larger quantity than it

started with. But it ought to, normatively speaking." And once you realize that the brain can't multiply by eight, then the other cases of scope neglect stop seeming to reveal some fundamental truth about 50,000 lives being worth just the same effort as 5,000 lives, or whatever. You don't get the impression you're looking at the revelation of a deep moral truth about nonagglomerative utilities. It's just that the brain doesn't goddamn multiply. Quantities get thrown out the window. If you have $100 to spend, and you spend $20 each on each of 5 efforts to save 5,000 lives, you will do worse than if you spend $100 on a single effort to save 50,000 lives. Likewise if such choices are made by 10 different people, rather than the same person. As soon as you start believing that it is better to save 50,000 lives than 25,000 lives, that simple preference of final destinations has implications for the choice of paths, when you consider five different events that save 5,000 lives. (It is a general principle that Bayesians see no difference between the long-run answer and the short-run answer; you never get two different answers from computing the same question two different ways. But the long run is a helpful intuition pump, so I am talking about it anyway.) The aggregative valuation strategy of "shut up and multiply" arises from the simple preference to have more of something - to save as many lives as possible - when you have to describe general principles for choosing more than once, acting more than once, planning at more than one time. Aggregation also arises from claiming that the local choice to save one life doesn't depend on how many lives already exist, far away on the other side of the planet, or far away on the other side of the universe. Three lives are one and one and one. No matter how many billions are doing better, or doing worse. 3 = 1 + 1 + 1, no matter what other quantities you add to both sides of the equation. And

if you add another life you get 4 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. That's aggregation. When you've read enough heuristics and

biases research, and enough coherence and uniqueness proofs for Bayesian probabilities and

expected utility, and you've seen the "Dutch book" and "money pump" effects that penalize trying to handle uncertain outcomes any

other way, then you don't see the preference reversals in the Allais Paradox as revealing some

incredibly deep moral truth about the intrinsic value of certainty. It just goes to show that the brain doesn't goddamn multiply. The primitive, perceptual intuitions that make a choice "feel good" don't handle probabilistic pathways through time very skillfully, especially when the probabilities have been expressed symbolically rather than experienced as a frequency. So you reflect, devise more trustworthy logics, and think it through in words. When you see people insisting that no amount of money whatsoever is worth a single human life, and then driving an extra mile to save $10; or when you see people insisting that no amount of money is worth a decrement of health, and then choosing the cheapest health insurance available; then you don't think that their protestations reveal some deep truth about incommensurable

utilities. Part of it, clearly, is that primitive intuitions don't successfully diminish the emotional impact of symbols standing for small quantities - anything you talk about seems like "an amount worth considering". And part of it has to do with preferring unconditional social rules to conditional social rules. Conditional rules seem weaker, seem more subject to manipulation. If there's any loophole that lets the government legally commit torture, then the government will drive a truck through that loophole. So it seems like there should be an unconditional social injunction against preferring money to life, and no "but" following it. Not even "but a thousand dollars isn't worth a 0.0000000001% probability of saving a life". Though the latter choice, of course, is revealed every time we sneeze without calling a doctor. The rhetoric of sacredness gets bonus points for seeming to express an unlimited commitment, an unconditional refusal that signals trustworthiness and refusal to compromise. So you conclude that moral rhetoric espouses qualitative distinctions, because espousing a quantitative tradeoff would sound like you were plotting to defect. On such occasions, people vigorously want to throw quantities out the window, and they get upset if you try to bring quantities back in, because quantities sound like conditions that would weaken the rule. But you don't conclude that there are actually two tiers of utility with lexical ordering. You don't conclude that there is actually an infinitely sharp moral gradient, some atom that moves a Planck distance (in our continuous physical universe) and sends a utility from 0 to infinity. You don't conclude that utilities must be expressed using hyper-real numbers. Because the lower tier would simply vanish in any equation. It would never be worth the tiniest effort to recalculate for it. All decisions would be determined by the upper tier, and all thought spent thinking about the upper tier only, if the upper tier genuinely had lexical priority. As Peter Norvig once pointed out, if Asimov's robots had strict priority for the First Law of Robotics ("A robot shall not harm a human being, nor through inaction allow a human being to come to harm") then no robot's behavior would ever show any sign of the other two Laws; there would always be some tiny First Law factor that would be sufficient to determine the decision. Whatever value is worth thinking about at all, must be worth trading off against all other values worth thinking about, because thought itself is a limited resource that must be traded off. When you reveal a value, you reveal a utility. I don't say that morality should always be simple. I've already said that the meaning of music is more than happiness alone, more than just a pleasure center lighting up. I would rather see music composed by people than by nonsentient machine learning algorithms, so that someone should have the joy of composition; I care about the journey, as well as the destination. And I am ready to hear if you tell me that the value of music is deeper, and involves more complications, than I realize - that the valuation of this one event is more complex than I know. But that's for one event. When it comes to

multiplying by quantities and probabilities, complication is to be avoided - at least if you care more about the destination than the journey. When you've reflected on enough intuitions, and corrected enough absurdities, you start to

see a common denominator, a meta-principle at work, which one might phrase as "Shut up and multiply." Where music is concerned, I care about the journey. When lives are at stake, I shut up and multiply. It is more important that lives be saved, than that we conform to any particular ritual in saving them. And the optimal path to

that destination is governed by laws that are simple, because they are math. And that's why I'm a utilitarian - at least when I am doing something that is overwhelmingly more important than my own feelings about it - which is most of the time, because there are not many utilitarians, and many things left undone.


Second-personal morality devolves to utilSinger 93 writes2

The universal aspect of ethics, I suggest, does provide a persuasive, although not conclusive, reason for taking a broadly utilitarian position. My reason

for suggesting this is as follows. In accepting that ethical judgments must be made from a

universal point of view, I am accepting that my own interests cannot, simply because

they are my interests, count more than the interests of anyone else. Thus my very

natural concern that my own interests be looked after must, when I think ethically, be extended to the interests of others. Now, imagine that I am trying to decide between two possible courses of action – perhaps whether to eat all the fruits I have collected myself, or to share them with others. Imagine, too, that I am deciding in a complete ethical vacuum, that I know nothing of any ethical considerations – I am, we might say, in a pre-ethical stage of thinking. How would I make up my mind? One thing that would be still relevant would be how the possible courses of action will affect my interests. Indeed, if we define ‘interests’ broadly enough, so that we count anything people desire as in their interests (unless it is incompatible with another desire or desires), then it would seem that at this pre-ethical stage, only one’s own interests can be relevant to the decision. Suppose I then begin to think ethically, to the extent of recognizing that my own interests cannot count for more, simply because they are my own, than the interests of others. In place of my own interests, I now have to take into account the

interests of all those affected by my decision. This requires me to weigh up all these interests and

adopt the course of action most likely to maximize the interests of those affected.

Consequentialist theories are the simplest explanation of rational decision-makingPettit 99 writes3

There are at least three respects in which consequentialism scores on simplicity. The first is that whereas

consequentialists endorse only one way of responding to values, non-consequentialists endorse two. Non-consequentialists all

commit themselves to the view that certain values should be honoured rather than promoted: say, values like those associated with loyalty and respect. But they all agree, whether

or not in their role as moral theorists, that certain other values should be promoted: values as various as economic prosperity, personal hygiene, and the safety of nuclear installations. Thus where consequentialists introduce a single

axiom on how values justify choices, non-consequentialists must

introduce two. But not only is non-consequentialism less simple for losing the numbers game. It is also less simple for playing the

game in an ad hoc way. Non-consequentialists all identify certain values as suitable for honouring rather than promoting. But they do not generally explain what it is about the values identified which means that justification comes from their being honoured rather than promoted. And indeed it is not

clear what satisfactory explanation can be provided. It is one thing to make a list of the values which allegedly require honouring: values, say, like personal loyalty, respect for others, and punishment for

wrongdoing. It is another to say why these values are so very different from the

ordinary run of desirable properties. There may be features that mark them off from other values, but why do those features matter so much? That question typically goes unconsidered by non-consequentialists. Not only do they have a duality then where

consequentialists have a unity; they also have an unexplained duality . The third respect in which

consequentialism scores on the simplicity count is that it fits nicely with our standard views

of what rationality requires, whereas non-consequentialism is in tension with such views. The agent concerned with a value is in a

parallel position to that of an agent concerned with some personal good: say, health or income or status. In thinking about how an agent should act on

the concern for a personal good, we unhesitatingly say that of course the rational thing to do, the rationally justified action, is to act so that the good is promoted. That means then that whereas the consequentialist line on how values justify choices is continuous with the standard line on rationality in the pursuit of personal goods, the non-

2 Peter Singer, “Practical Ethics,” Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 13-143 Philip Pettit (Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton). “Consequentialism.” A Companion to Ethics, ed. Peter Singer. Oxford. 1991. https://www.princeton.edu/~ppettit/papers/Consequentialism_Companion_1991.pdf


consequentialist line is not. The non-consequentialist has the embarrassment of having to defend a position on what certain values require which is without analogue in the

non-moral area of practical rationality.

Thus the standard is maximizing happiness.


2

Trade promotion authority is viable because of the GOP Senate but a number of Dems need to be on boardMauldin 11-5 writes4

The Republican victory in the Senate won’t guarantee passage of stalled trade legislation, but it does sideline the bill’s biggest foe this year: Sen. Harry Reid . The Senate majority leader, a Nevada Democrat, dealt a body blow to President Barack Obama ’s trade policy in January when spoke against legislation that eases congressional passage of the international agreements. His comments, apparently to help protect fellow Democrats in the election, drew heightened attention because they came just hours after Mr. Obama endorsed the legislation in his State of the Union address. Sen. Reid’s rebuke was picked up by Rep. Nancy Pelosi , the House minority leader, and other members of their party and gave Democrats, who often oppose trade agreements, some breathing room on a divisive issue during the election year. Nine months later, the Obama administration is closer to finishing negotiations with Japan and 10 other Asia-Pacific countries on a deal that would lower or eliminate tariffs and set rules of the road in labor and the environment for a third of global trade. To pass complicated trade agreements, Congress typically works out a system in advance to ensure the deals won’t get bogged down in procedural delays or blocked by individual lawmakers concerned about fallout in their districts. The system—known as trade promotion authority or fast track—also sets official U.S. goals for trade

agreements and can help with enforcement. Mr. Reid effectively blocked a version of fast track worked out by former Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the previous chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and current U.S. ambassador to China; Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the finance committee; and Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Since then, the new finance chief in the Senate, Ron Wyden of Oregon, has been working on a version of fast track that would appeal to more Democratic lawmakers. Many congressional Democrats are concerned fast track would pave the way for a deal that allows manufacturing jobs to move to cheap-labor countries in the Pacific trade bloc, including Vietnam. They also worry the Pacific framework—called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP—could lead Detroit to lose ground to Japan’s auto industry, a weakening of corporate environmental standards and the boosting of patent protection for

pharmaceuticals in ways that would raise medicine prices in poorer countries. Mr. Obama and Republicans see benefits to businesses, as well as the potential for extra economic growth. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed interest this week in moving trade legislation, Administration officials don’t deny that a Republican-led Senate could help Mr.

Obama’s trade agenda. “It speeds it because if Harry Reid is no longer controlling the calendar—that’s a big thing,” said Gary Hufbauer, trade expert at the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington. A spokesman for Sen. Reid didn’t respond to a request for comment on fast track before Tuesday’s election. Observers say Mr. Reid has tended to oppose trade legislation personally rather than work to block its passage. To push the administration’s trade policy, U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman and his staff have held some 1,500 briefings on Capitol Hill on the TPP. This year’s congressional friction on trade in Washington is making it harder for Mr. Froman to strike an attractive deal overseas, people following the talks

say. Foreign officials don’t want to make politically painful sacrifices in a trade deal if the agreement could be halted or gutted by Congress. Of course, Republican control of both chambers doesn’t make trade a slam dunk . Mr.

Hufbauer said the administration needs to get about 20 House Democrats signed up to pass fast track in the lower chamber. Even with a GOP advantage in the Senate starting in January, several Democrats would need to step forward to bring the measure to a vote without risking a filibuster. “As it goes through the process of moving through Congress, we’re going to rely on a bipartisan majority to get that done,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Monday. That won’t be easy in the current environment, especially after TPP and fast-track opponents attracted a wide following this year. Case in point: The Metro station in Washington closest to the House of Representatives is currently covered with union-backed ads attacking

fast track.

Obama’s polcap is key to get enough Dems on boardHudson 10-31 writes5

Republicans have promised to halt President Barack Obama's second-term agenda if they win the Senate on Tuesday, fighting key presidential appointments, environmental regulations, immigration and health care reform, and an extension on unemployment benefits. But one of the president's top priorities may actually have a greater chance of becoming law if Republicans win big on Nov. 4: his ambitious global trade agenda, which faces deep

opposition within Obama's own Democratic Party. The administration is currently negotiating two proposed free-trade agreements with the European Union and key nations in the Asia-Pacific region: the cumbersomely named Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Obama has been pushing for the deals for years because he says they will increase U.S. exports and create millions of jobs at home. Though scores of obstacles remain in the way of both trade deals, some of the strongest

opposition has come from congressional Democrats, who've blocked the president's request for "fast-track"

4 William Mauldin (reporter, Wall Street Journal). “GOP Victory Opens Pathway to Trade Bill.” Wall Street Journal. November 5th, 2014. http://online.wsj.com/articles/gop-victory-opens-pathway-to-trade-bill-14151980945 John Hudson (staff writer at Foreign Policy magazine and a blogger at The Cable where he reports on U.S. foreign policy and national security issues. Prior to joining FP, John covered politics and global affairs for Atlantic Media. In 2008, he covered the August War between Russia and Georgia from Tbilisi and the breakaway region of Abkhazia. He’s appeared on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, C-SPAN, Fox News radio and other broadcast outlets). “How Obama Can Ride the Republican Wave.” Foreign Policy. October 31st, 2014. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/31/how_obama_can_ride_the_republican_wave


trade authority and raised concerns about the impact of global trade on union jobs and wages. If the Senate flips, pro-trade Republicans will dominate key committees that deal with trade policy and relegate more

protectionist Democrats to the minority. Unlike most other issues, Republicans are increasingly

signaling a willingness to work with Obama to strengthen his negotiating position with partners overseas. "If we have a GOP takeover

of the Senate, I think it markedly improves the prospects for passing trade-promotion

authority ," Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), a member of the House Ways and Means subcommittee for trade, told Foreign

Policy. "I'll work with this president and anyone else to help get this done." Trade promotion authority legislation, or TPA, allows the president to submit a trade agreement to Congress for a straight up or down vote without any amendments. Many experts argue that giving the president this authority is critical to wringing the most concessions from foreign governments during trade negotiations and therefore getting the best possible deal for America -- the logic being that other countries won't extend their best offer if they know Congress can later amend the deal in a thousand different ways. In 2012, the Obama administration also signaled that passage of TPA would be required to close the 12-country TPP mega-deal, which would lower tariffs and harmonize a range of regulatory and trade issues in the Asia-Pacific economic zone. But convincing Democrats to support fast-track authority has been a challenge for the White House. In late January, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he opposed granting fast-track authority to the president, a decision that came on the heels of a fierce lobbying effort by 550 labor, environmental, and consumer-advocacy groups, including the powerful United Auto Workers union. "Everyone would be well-advised to not push this right now," said Reid, effectively killing the chance the bill would ever make it to the Senate floor. The move took the air out of a bipartisan bill introduced in early January by then-Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) in the House Ways and Means Committee that would have granted the president trade promotion authority and established a detailed set of guidelines for trade objectives in the TPP negotiations. Now, with the prospect of a GOP-controlled Senate, Republicans say

the chances to pass trade promotion authority are better than ever, which would be key to securing deals on TPP and T-TIP. However, they still can't do it without a critical mass of Democrats, which they say

only the president himself can deliver . " Moving forward, we need the president's

active engagement and support ," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the ranking member of the Senate

Finance Committee, told FP. "Sadly, this administration's enthusiasm for TPA seems tepid at best. There are many negotiations underway with our partners in Europe and the Pacific, but I fear their likelihood to succeed is slim without TPA." A spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative flatly denied the charge that the Obama administration is insufficiently engaged in building congressional support for TPA. "This administration has made clear to Republicans and Democrats alike that expanding economic opportunity for American workers, businesses, and farmers through trade is a top priority," said USTR spokesman Matthew McAlvanah. "In addition to the president directly appealing to Congress to move forward in a bipartisan manner on trade issues, top cabinet officials have met directly with members of Congress and fanned out across the country to discuss the broad economic benefits of opening new markets with the American people." He added that the USTR has conducted more than 1,500 meetings with congressional offices on the TPP alone, and that the president has outlined the benefits of free trade in every State of the Union address since he entered the White House. Despite that level of engagement, some trade experts say the White House still isn't involved enough. "There has been some consultation and [U.S. Trade Representative Michael] Froman has done an effective job at that. But the joint problem-solving that typically leads to a successful trade promotion authority bill is an intensive process and that hasn't happened yet," said Scott Miller, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The White House needs to send a clear signal that this is on the agenda, much as Bill Clinton did for trade with China, much as Ronald Reagan did for the 1988 Foreign Trade Act, much as George W. Bush did for his trade policies." But while Republicans are genuinely united on free trade, they're not a monolith: A number of Tea Party groups have signaled opposition to granting trade promotion authority due to concerns about the secrecy of the talks and a broader distrust of Obama. "The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not free trade. It is at best special interest and corporatist managed trade," Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, wrote in January. "Does anyone really trust Barack Obama to deliver an international agreement that is good for America?" Pro-trade Republicans like Boustany, who blame the White House for a lack of engagement with Democrats on the issue, acknowledged that dissent exists within his own caucus, but vowed to do his own part in whipping up support. "I've already been on the front lines as a part of the education process to bring them up to speed about TPA," he said. "While there are some Tea Party groups in opposition, I feel strongly that there'll be broad Republican support for this." The other elephant in the room is the international negotiations themselves. While many hoped that TPP negotiations could be concluded this year, few actually believe there's any chance of a deal until 2015. The diverse 12-member trade bloc, which includes countries ranging from Canada to Japan to Brunei to Mexico to New Zealand, continues to grapple over contentious issues related to intellectual property, agriculture tariffs, and investments. Though lawmakers such as Boustany believe the key to breaking the diplomatic stalemate is the passage of TPA, others say the trade bloc is too large and cumbersome to accommodate the interests of every country.

Regardless, for an administration that's looking at a divided Congress for the rest of its

tenure, trade may be one of the last opportunities to get something done.

Though it would mean a tough fight within the Democratic Party, the White House may be willing to get

in the mud for the sake of its legacy . "The administration will continue to make the case that trade done

right will help support good-paying jobs and bolster economic growth here at home," said McAlvanah.

RTBF isn’t politically viable—Americans will perceive it as a threat to free speechToobin 9-29 writes6

The consequences of the Court’s decision are just beginning to be understood. Google has fielded about a hundred and twenty thousand requests for deletions and granted roughly half of them. Other search engines that provide service in Europe, like Microsoft’s Bing, have set up similar systems.

6 Jeffrey Toobin (has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and the senior legal analyst for CNN since 2002.). “The Solace of Oblivion.” Annals of Law. September 29th, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/solace-oblivion


Public reaction to the decision, especially in the United States and Great Britain, has been largely critical. An editorial in the New York Times declared that it “could undermine press freedoms and freedom of speech.” The risk, according to the Times and others, is that aggrieved individuals could use the decision to hide or suppress information of public importance, including links about elected officials. A recent report by a committee of the House of Lords called the decision “misguided in principle and unworkable in practice.” Jules Polonetsky, the executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum, a think tank in Washington, was more vocal. “The decision will go down in history as one of the most significant mistakes that Court has ever made,” he said. “It gives very little value to free expression. If a particular Web site is doing something illegal, that should be stopped, and Google shouldn’t link to it. But for the Court to outsource to Google complicated case-specific decisions about whether to publish or suppress something is wrong. Requiring Google to be a court of philosopher kings shows a real lack of understanding about how this will play out in reality.” At

the same time, the Court’s decision spoke to an anxiety felt keenly on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, the right to privacy trumps freedom of speech; the reverse is true in the United States. “Europeans think of the right to privacy as a fundamental human right, in the way that we think of freedom of expression or the right to counsel,” Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, said recently. “When it comes to privacy, the United States’ approach has been to provide protection for certain categories of information that are deemed sensitive and then impose some obligation not to disclose unless certain conditions are met.” Congress has passed laws prohibiting the disclosure of medical information (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), educational records (the Buckley Amendment), and video-store rentals (a law passed in response to revelations about Robert Bork’s rentals when he was nominated to the Supreme Court). Any of these protections can be overridden with the consent of the individual or as

part of law-enforcement investigations. The American regard for freedom of speech, reflected in the First Amendment, guarantees that the Costeja judgment would never pass muster under U.S. law. The Costeja records were public, and they were reported correctly by the newspaper at the time; constitutionally, the press has a nearly absolute right to publish accurate, lawful information. (Recently, an attorney in Texas, who had successfully fought a disciplinary judgment by the local bar association, persuaded a trial court to order Google to delete links on the subject; Google won a reversal in an appellate court.) “The Costeja decision is clearly inconsistent with U.S. law,” Granick said. “So the question is whether it’s good policy.”


TPA is key to US economic competitivenessThune 14 writes7

After five years of economic stagnation and high unemployment, we should be seizing every opportunity to create more jobs and get the economy growing at a faster pace. We could do that today in both the Senate and House by passing legislation giving the president the authority to wrap up the two trade pacts — all without adding a dime to the deficit. Presidents of both parties have in the past used trade promotion authority to negotiate trade agreements that help American farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs and job creators gain access to new consumers around the globe. By renewing the authority, which expired in 2007, Congress sets the rules for the proposed trade agreements and, in return, agrees to allow for a straight up-or-down vote when the agreements come before it. The Department of Commerce recently announced that the United States exported $2.3 trillion of goods and services in 2013, setting another record for the fourth consecutive year. According to economists, every billion dollar of additional exports creates about 5,000 well-paying U.S. jobs. Roughly 10 million jobs nationwide are tied directly to exports. In fact, exports have created 1.3 million new jobs just since 2010. Exports of U.S. agricultural products reached a record $141 billion in 2012, up from less than $90 billion five years earlier. More than 1 in 5 jobs in South Dakota is tied to trade, according to estimates in a recent Business Roundtable study, up from 11 percent in 1992. But we can do better. The

trade agreements with 11 Asia-Pacific countries and the 28 European Union nations would open up access to one billion consumers around the globe. That could translate into thousands of new jobs and faster economic growth. This opportunity can only become reality, however, if the president has the authority to close the

deals. Foreign nations won’t put their best offers on the table if they

believe Congress will renegotiate an agreement. T rade promotion authority, and the

trade agreements it will enable, is the best way to bring down foreign barriers to U.S. products and services. Our market is already largely open to foreign imports. Shouldn’t we demand that other nations return the favor?

Fast-tracking trade agreements has another big benefit. It would promote the creation of high-paying, research-intensive jobs in the U.S. by better protecting intellectual property — everything from life-saving medicines to cutting-edge software and computing — of U.S. companies doing business overseas. The president is the only person who can

ensure that the United States will keep pace in the global competitive

economy . If he is serious about seeing this important legislation passed, he should stop paying lip service to trade promotion authority and

pick up the phone and urge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and members of Congress to support it.

Competitiveness solves great power warsBaru 9 writes8

Hence, economic policies and performance do have strategic consequences.2 In the modern era, the idea that strong economic performance is the foundation of power was argued most persuasively by historian Paul Kennedy.

'Victory (in war)', Kennedy claimed, 'has repeatedly gone to the side with more flourishing productive base'.3 Drawing attention to the interrelationships between economic wealth, technological innovation, and

the ability of states to efficiently mobilize economic and technological resources for power projection and national defence, Kennedy argued that nations that were able to better combine military and economic

strength scored over others. 'The fact remains', Kennedy argued, 'that all of the major shifts in the world's military-power balance have followed alterations in the productive balances; and further,

that the rising and falling of the various empires and states in the international system has been confirmed by the outcomes of the major Great Power wars, where victory has always gone to the

side with the greatest material resources'.4 In Kennedy's view, the geopolitical consequences of an economic crisis,

or even decline, would be transmitted through a nation's inability to find adequate financial resources to

simultaneously sustain economic growth and military power, the classic 'guns versus butter' dilemma.

7 Senator John Thune (Republican from South Dakota, serves on the Senate Finance Committee and is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference). “Democrats must give Obama trade promotion authority.” Reuters. February 25th, 2014. http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/02/25/give-obama-trade-promotion-authority/8 Sanjaya Baru is a Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore Geopolitical Implications of the Current Global Financial Crisis, Strategic Analysis, Volume 33, Issue 2 March 2009 , pages 163 - 168


These conflicts will escalate and cause extinction. Kagan 7 writes9

The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War

international system. Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from intensifying — its regional as well as its global predominance.

Were the United States to diminish its influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the

other nations would settle disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through

diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and

destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear weapons. That could make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more

catastrophic.

3

Counterplan Text: The right to erase ought to be recognized as a civil right.

It’s mutually exclusive because it doesn’t grant Google or Facebook the authority to settle privacy claims.The counterplan solves Internet privacy while avoiding a chilling effect on free speechBrookman 12 writes10

Instead of a broad and impractical power to erase all iterations of controversial information, we’ve proposed instead that the Right

to be Forgotten be reformulated as a more limited Right to Erase — if you choose to host or store data with a particular service provider (such as a cloud email service or a

social networking site) — then you should have the right to delete that data. However, if you’ve previously made the decision to share information publicly, you can’t reasonably expect the internet to go out and retrieve all that information for you. Nor should the Google and Facebooks of the world be responsible if someone uses their platforms to republish previously public information.

Rather, if an individual has a legitimate gripe about another person violating their privacy rights on an intermediary’s platform, that other person should be held responsible, and not the platform that unconsciously hosted the information. Platforms do not have the organizational or moral capacity to

legally adjudicate between one member’s privacy rights and another’s free expression rights. Moreover, putting that kind of content

monitoring obligations on intermediaries will discourage them from providing open platforms for user speech and

encourage risk-averse takedowns of any speech that might prove controversial. However, while

9 Robert Kagan (Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution). “End of Dreams: Return of History.” Foreign Policy. 2007. 10 Justin Brookman (Justin Brookman is the Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Consumer Privacy Project. Justin has testified before House and Senate Committees on location privacy and data security, as well as the general need for stronger consumer privacy protections. Under Justin’s direction, CDT has filed formal complaints with the Federal Trade Commission against companies that violate users’ privacy and free expression rights. Prior to joining CDT in January 2010, Justin was Chief of the Internet Bureau of the New York Attorney General’s office. Under his leadership, the Internet Bureau was one of the most active and aggressive law enforcement groups working on Internet issues, and Justin brought to court several groundbreaking cases to protect the rights of online consumers. He brought the first regulatory actions against spyware and adware companies, as well as against the advertisers who funded those companies. Justin received his J.D. from the New York University School of Law in 1998 and his B.A. in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1995). “Euro Security Experts Deem ‘Right to be Forgotten’ Impossible.” Center for Democracy and Technology. December 4th, 2012. https://cdt.org/blog/euro-security-experts-deem-right-to-be-forgotten-impossible/


we’re skeptical of a broadly construed Right to be Forgotten, we strongly disagree with the notion that individuals don’t have reasonable privacy rights and expectations in the internet age. To the contrary, we strongly agree with the ENISA report’s stressing the principles of minimal disclosure and minimal duration of storage. CDT believes very strongly in technological tools to prevent the leakage of personal information to people and companies you’re not trying to communicate with, as

well as legal rights to prevent secondary use and disclosure for marketing and other otherwise legitimate purposes you might not like. At the same time, privacy law cannot be construed to trample other individuals’ free expression rights that are guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, or a robust free press unfettered by government censorship. Government authority to eliminate factual information from the platforms of the internet would be a tremendous threat to those values.

Making Google responsible for privacy protections means they’ll get circumvented—kills aff solvencyO’Brien and York 14 write11

Currently the EU’s requirement on Google to censor certain entries can easily

be bypassed by searching on Bing, say, or by using the US Google search, or by appending extra search terms than simply a name. That is not surprising. Online censorship

can almost always be circumvented . Turkey’s ban on Twitter was equally useless, but extremely worrying

nonetheless. Even Jordan’s draconian censorship of news sites that fail to register for licenses has been bypassed using Facebook...but should be condemned on principle regardless.

Case

Contractualism fails at providing a source of moral motivation and the source it does provide fails to treat humans as intrinsically valuableShoemaker 2k writes12

But is this in fact the most plausible account of all moral motivation? And even if we have reason to think that it is, how might we convince the amoralist to cultivate the motivational desire at the heart of this account? The first problem has been articulated in a number of articles attacking both utilitarian and deontological views (such as Kantian contractualism) for ignoring the sources of moral motivation found in human beings � pursuit of the good life. 9 Against the kind of contractualism I have discussed, the objection might run as follows. Surely it must be agreed that some of the greatest human goods include love, friendship, community attachments, and the having of one or another ground project (a project the pursuit of which lends meaning to one �s life). And having these sorts of goods necessarily involves having certain motives for action. For example, the love I have for my wife necessarily involves not only valuing her qua beloved, but also not valuing her as, say, simply the possessor or producer of certain values (e.g., as a particular instan- tiation here and now of a free moral agent) (Stocker, 459). So I am moved to help her, for example, simply in light of the fact that she is my beloved. Similarly, I may have certain ground projects which provide meaning for my life, and it is these ground projects which propel my life forward

and give me reasons for acting in certain ways (Williams, 10-15). But it is alleged that the source of moral motivation elaborated by the contractualist seems importantly at odds with

the source of motivation underlying these everyday moral pursuits, in one of two ways. On the one hand, it has been claimed that if the ultimate source of moral motivation is to be the desire for justifiability, then the very possibility of pursuing

certain of these crucial human goods is undermined. After all, if my motivational set embodies the notion of

justification as its sole focus, I will necessarily be treating all other people externally, that is, as possessors of certain values, and not as intrinsically valuable, that is, as valuable in themselves, a stance required for love, friendship, and

certain community attachments (Stocker, 461). If I am moved to action solely by the

11 Danny O’Brien (has been an activist for online free speech and privacy for over 15 years. In his home country of the UK, he fought against repressive anti-encryption law, and helped make the UK Parliament more transparent with FaxYourMP) and Jillian York (EFF's Director for International Freedom of Expression. Jillian's work has been featured in Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, and the New York Times, among others. She is also a regular speaker at global events. Prior to joining EFF, Jillian worked at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where she worked on several projects including the OpenNet Initiative and Herdict. She is the co-founder of the award-winning multilingual blog Talk Morocco, and has volunteered with Global Voices for many years). “Rights That Are Being Forgotten: Google, the ECJ, and Free Expression.” Electronic Frontier Foundation. July 8th, 2014. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/rights-are-being-forgotten-google-ecj-and-free-expression12 David Shoemaker (California State University). “Reductionist Contractualism: Moral Motivation and the Expanding Self.” 2000. http://www.csun.edu/~ds56723/cjppaper.pdf


desire for justifiability, then this motivation seems to preclude one of the motivations involved in love, e.g., that I perform certain actions entirely for the sake of the beloved and for no other reason (such as, for example, that the beloved is a person for whom the notion of such justification makes sense). On the other hand, suppose contractualists are not claiming that the desire for justifiability is the only source of moral motivation. Perhaps it is merely the �trumping source.� 10 Yet even if this is the case, a similar problem remains. For it seems as if we all recognize �that among the immensely valuable traits and activities that a human life might posi- tively embrace are some of which we hope that, if a person does embrace them, he does so not for moral reasons � (Wolf, 434). Suppose, for example, that I am on a boat with my wife and a stranger. The boat capsizes, and I am able to rescue only one of these two people. What would the contractualist have us do? It would surely be absurd to maintain impar- tiality by flipping a coin, and fortunately the Scanlonian picture avoids such a result. Rather, it would be permissible for me to save my wife just in case no one could reasonably reject a set of rules allowing such an action, and in this case it seems as if no one could reasonably reject such a set of rules. So I can justify to the stranger my letting him die on grounds he himself could reasonably accept. But notice the oddness of the result, for it sounds as if some relief is attached: �Whew! Thank goodness my moral commitments didn �t require me to let my wife die! � 11 The oddness here, as Bernard Williams points out, stems from there being one thought too many. One would think that, finding myself in such circumstances, I would be motivated to save my wife solely because she is my wife , and not because she is my wife and in situations of this kind it is

permissible o save one �s wife (ibid., 18). Some morally charged situations, it seems,�� lie outside the arena of justification altogether. Consequently, the contractualist faces a real problem if she cannot fully account for the motivational source(s) grounding these crucial human pursuits. On the one hand, if the Scanlonian source of moral motivation is supposed to be our sole ultimate source of moral motivation, then it would have to preclude

the possibility of genuine love and fellow-feeling, which is absurd. On the other hand, even if this desire for justifiability is merely to be the trumping motivational source among certain other desires or reasons for action, then

it still occasionally provides one thought too many and thus seems at

worst implausible and at best redundant. The desire for justifiability thus looks inadequate as a source of moral motivation, and

any contractualism resting on such a desire would seem to be highly problematic.

Contractualism devolves to util. Cummiskey 08 writes13

Scanlon’s contractualism should set aside at the start agent-relative moral reasons, that is, special obligations and deontological reasons, and start only with the non-moral agent-relative reasons of autonomy. On this revised interpretation, the grounds for reasonable

rejection can appeal[s] only to the fundamental projects and commitments of the contractors. The problem for the deontologist, however, remains. We still need an explanation of how this procedure gives rise to agent-relative ‘reasons of special obligation’ and ‘deontological reasons’. Such a claim is utterly ad hoc, unmotivated and unjustified. Since the only agent-relative reasons that are inputs to the contractualist procedure are ‘reasons of autonomy’ – individual commitments to projects, relationships and other personal goals – the moral reasons must piggyback on these types of reasons alone. One obvious proposal is that reasonable grounds for the

rejection of principles must be based on the assumption that there is a corresponding agent-neutral reason for every agent-relative reason. The result would be a principle of reasonable rejection that gives impartial equal consideration or weight to each agent’s ends. So interpreted,

it is hard to see why this does not result[s] in some form of consequentialist principle. What we have here is a familiar argument for

utilitarianism – with the standard concerns over whether the fundamental principle will be a maximizing or satisficing principle, and of course whether it will be simply aggregative or also include distribution-sensitive considerations based on the priority of theworst-off or egalitarian values.24 In short, contractualism so interpreted seems to generate some form of aggregative and/or distribution-sensitive consequentialism. I believe that the closest Scanlon comes to addressing this alternative is in his discussion of ‘welfare contractualism’. His rejection of welfare contractualism, however, brings us back to the problem with which we started.

RTBF kills privacy—it’d undermine online anonymityBrookman 12 writes14

13 “Dignity, Contractualism, and Consequentialism,” David Cummiskey. Utilitas Vol. 20, No. 4, December 2008.14 Justin Brookman (Justin Brookman is the Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Consumer Privacy Project. Justin has testified before House and Senate Committees on location privacy and data security, as well as the general need for stronger consumer privacy protections. Under Justin’s direction, CDT has filed formal complaints with the Federal Trade Commission against companies that violate users’ privacy and free expression rights. Prior to joining CDT in January 2010, Justin was Chief of the Internet Bureau of the New York Attorney General’s office. Under his leadership, the Internet Bureau was one of the most active and aggressive law enforcement groups working on Internet issues, and Justin brought to court several groundbreaking cases to protect the rights of online consumers. He brought the first regulatory actions against spyware and adware companies, as well as against the advertisers who funded those companies. Justin received his J.D. from the New York University School of Law in 1998 and his B.A. in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1995). “Euro Security Experts Deem ‘Right to be Forgotten’ Impossible.” Center for Democracy and Technology. December 4th, 2012. https://cdt.org/blog/euro-security-experts-deem-right-to-be-forgotten-impossible/


In its analysis, ENISA comes to the same conclusion that we have: that a universal Right to be Forgotten is technically impossible on an open internet. It is simply not feasible to track down and erase all copies of factual information that had previously been made public. This is a welcome development, and hopefully will serve as a reality check against magical thinking that the Right to be Forgotten can easily be shoehorned onto the internet. However, as an alternative, ENISA proposes a panoply of half measures including informational Digital Rights Management and internet filtering to imperfectly simulate a Right to be Forgotten. While CDT believes strongly in the importance of developing practical policy solutions to preserve privacy on the open internet, we believe that these measures would ultimately do more harm than good. Instead, we recommend that the Right to be Forgotten be reconstituted as a more limited Right to Erase information that you’ve personally shared with online service providers, and that individuals be empowered to prevent the unwanted disclosure of personal information in the first place. One Does Not Simply Eliminate Public Facts The first part of the ENISA report lays out the practical reasons that a Right to be Forgotten can’t work. You should read them for yourself, but they’re many of the same intractable questions that critics have identified since the proposal first came out: who gets to decide when to erase facts that pertain to more than one person (e.g., David and Sarah got married), how to deal with individuals repurposing information in social media (Sarah retweeting something David said), and how to deal with the practicalities of redundant storage. And there’s also the fundamental problem of how to a Right to be Forgotten intersects with legitimate free expression and journalistic reporting of truthful personal information. Eventually, the report comes to the crux of the matter, concluding that a reliable Right to be Forgotten on the internet is simply not feasible: “enforcing

the right to be forgotten is impossible in an open, global system, in general.” This is because on the internet both readers and speakers often enjoy a degree of anonymity making the reliable and consistent identification of potential objectors and online publishers impossible. How do you contact a speaker of information if you don’t know who he (or she) is? How can publishers reliably know that a

complaint comes from the individuals that the asserted facts pertain to? The only way to achieve a Right to be Forgotten would be to

fundamentally rework the nature of the internet, requiring verifiable identity authentication to access and

distribute information online. As such, the Right to be Forgotten would perversely represent a tremendous blow to personal privacy. Individuals would be forced to hand over personal identifying information to everyone else on the web, eliminating anonymous and pseudonymous speech online. We would lose the personal privacy that allows individuals to experiment and express themselves as they wish — not as they think others expect them to. Fortunately, ENISA does not seem to be calling for this, but is simply identifying how the Right to be Forgotten is incompatible with the internet. However, historically we have seen calls for mandating a real identity authenticated web. To date, these calls have been mostly unsuccessful (a law requiring real name attribution in South Korea was recently struck down), but preserving online anonymity is fundamentally vital to a free and open internet. A Right to be Forgotten would eliminate that.


RTBF kills privacy because of the Streisand effectTurk 14 writes15

Google’s compliance with EU “right to be forgotten” rules, the controversial law that allows individuals to request the removal of links from the

search engine, is starting to come into play. At the same time, it’s revealing how trying to make people forget you all too often has the

exact opposite effect . Various outlets noticed links had been removed from certain search queries yesterday. James Ball at

The Guardian wrote that the publication received automated emails from Google yesterday morning,

notifying them that six of their articles had been removed from search results. Economics editor

Robert Peston at the BBC wrote that he received the same notification for a piece he had

written seven years ago. Both outlets went on to publish stories about the “forgotten” articles. Which, of course, only made everyone remember them more. Even if you didn’t know about the stories in question beforehand, which their subjects clearly found embarrassing enough to demand a

takedown, you do now. It’s a classic example of the Streisand effect: too much effort to detract attention from something only leads to greater awareness and scrutiny. Peston wrote that his blog on former Merrill Lynch boss Stan O’Neal’s departure from the firm amid its collapse had been removed from some searches. Ball reported that three of the scrubbed Guardian articles included three about a controversy involving Scottish Premier League Dougie McDonald’s, a piece about solicitor Paul Baxendale-Walker facing allegations of fraud, and more bizarrely, the index page of a week’s worth of articles by one of the paper’s columnists. The last was an article about French office workers making art out of post-it notes. It’s important to remember that the buck doesn’t really stop with Google for the takedowns—they opposed the European ruling but lost. The search giant didn’t reveal the reasons why these links were removed, though it seems clear the most likely basis for people wanting the links removed is reputation management. Though I, for one, am not sure what’s so bad about the post-it note art. The plot thickens a little with the Merrill Lynch column, which Peston wrote still shows up in searches for Stan O’Neal—the only person mentioned by name in the piece—which he concludes suggests O’Neal might not have been behind the removal request. In any case, I’m betting all the names above didn’t mean much to you (and I doubt many readers would have recalled the great French post-it art debacle of 2011) if no one had

requested the links be “forgotten.” Asking for their removal only renews interest in the story, and as Google only removes

the search results, not the pages themselves, traffic to the articles in question

no doubt rebounded with vigour since yesterday thanks to pesky journalists calling

attention to them with a convenient hyperlink. Perhaps those who made the requests could go on to request that the subsequent articles about the removed links also vanish? I can envisage subjects and publishers chasing each other’s tales in a continuous loop of scrubbed links versus renewed coverage—though maybe those requesting removals may find themselves trapped in a Catch-22 at this point, as the search engine is only obliged to stop showing pages in response to certain searches if the information is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” Does the new interest—about the disappearance of the page from search results—ironically make the story newly relevant? The interest in these requests will of course deflate over time. Google told City AM today that it had received 50,000 requests since the ruling, and people will soon tire of writing stories about each and every one that is honoured. But the whole mess shows that there are clearly still creases to iron out in how the ruling is executed, and it continues to face vigorous opposition. Over at Forbes, Kashmir Hill observed that European Google searches for pretty much every name appear with the disclaimer that, “Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe,” even if that individual hasn’t made any requests (I haven’t, and the notice appears if you search my name on google.co.uk). The point is that you’re not supposed to know who has made requests for information to be removed, as the EU said it wasn’t in the spirit of the ruling to put a great big stamp on anyone’s search results that were censored. But even if Google doesn’t, you can bet that someone will. This is the Internet, after all. The stories about individual cases may quickly die

out as the news interest flounders, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t a free speech enthusiast out there coming up with a way to collate all the missing search results. Ball, for instance, suggested that news outlets rebel against the ruling by posting links to any “disappeared” articles on Twitter. His proposed @gdnvanished account has already been made, though it’s unclear who’s behind it. Despite the unprecedented ruling, the old wisdom still holds true: Once it’s on the Internet, there’s no taking it back.

15 Victoria Turk (editor). “The Streisand Effect of Google Forget.” Motherboard. July 3rd, 2014. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-streisand-effect-of-google-forget

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