Court ruling invites Google as censor

To have a private company make decisions that affect the media via an opaque process is to invite a legal, ethical and practical disaster. By Alistair Fairweather.

Which is more important to you, your right to freedom of speech or your right to privacy? Would you rather have the ability to control what is said about you or the ability to speak openly about contentious subjects? A fascinating collision between these rights is currently under way in the European Union (EU).

On 13 May, the European court of justice (ECJ), the highest court in the EU, ruled in favour of Costeja González and against Google. González asked the search engine giant to remove some unflattering links from the results that appeared when anyone searched for his name. Google refused, and so he took the company to court.

I haven't noticed but I did notice that every time I tried using google.com it automatically changed to google.co.uk. However, I heard Robert Peston say there are three letters you can add after google.com to stop it doing that but I've forgotten what they are.

The Authority for Television On Demand Ltd
27 Sheet Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1BN

Here is another example of a corporation in the shape of Microsoft acting as a self-appointed policeman:
https://www.noip.com/blog/2014/06/30/ip ... -takedown/

ATVOD, the policing 'authority' for on-demand videos is also a Limited company. This page shows ATVOD's address: http://www.atvod.co.uk/news-consultations/recruitment


And we shouldn't forget that Capita polices the TV License.

One day soon we may see such corporations as G4S and SERCO policing our streets instead of the standard British Bobby.

I doubt it. They may want to happen but the management and the professionalism in these public sector PRIVATE contractors leaves a hell of a lot to be desired.

2 words into our old friend google and it won't hide any results... Op Olympics.....

Born in Norfolk, Ms Homer studied law at University College London, before working at Reading Council for two years then Hertfordshire Council, where over a period of 15 years, she rose to the position of Director of Corporate Services.
This proved the springboard for her first major town hall job, in 1998, as chief executive of Suffolk Council.
Just four years later, the married mother of three daughters was parachuted into the same post at Birmingham City Council, on a jaw-dropping £174,000-year.
In 2005 she was accused of throwing ‘the rule book out of the window’ in a major postal votes scandal in Birmingham that ended up before the courts.
Election judge Richard Mawrey said fraud in the city ‘would have disgraced a banana republic’. He described Mrs Homer’s decision to allow postal ballot papers to be transported to the count in shopping bags as ‘the direst folly’.
But later that year she was chosen by the Home Office to run what was then called the Immigration and Nationality Directorate – this time on £200,000, plus bonuses.
Already in chaos, it was on her watch in 2006 that we learned of the mistaken release of 1,000 foreign criminals.
It later emerged some 450,000 asylum cases had not been dealt with but left in boxes at the Home Office.
The new UKBA was meant to clear up the mess, and Mrs Homer became its first chief executive, on an astonishing £208,000 a year.
But among a fresh run of scandals was the revelation that nearly 400 of the 1,000 foreign prisoners were told they could stay in Britain and dozens remained untraced.
Promotion came again in 2011 when she was handed the the post of Permanent Secretary at the Transport Department where she stayed for barely a year before winning her biggest job to date – running HMRC.
Since then she has been criticised for failing to tackle tax avoidance, admitting in November last year that over half of Britain’s biggest 770 firms funnel profits overseas.

HMRC chief executive Lin Homer has apologised for errors made by the Revenue in the calculation of its targets
Last week, it was revealed that a miscalculated baseline target had led to the Revenue falsely reporting it had exceeded targets by £1.9bn. 

Homer faced over three hours of questioning from the Treasury Select Committee today over HMRC’s business plan for the next two years. She said that HMRC “must accept responsibility” for the error and admitted "we aggregated badly."

Homer, accompanied by Ruth Owen, director general of personal tax and Jim Harra, director general of business tax at HMRC, was grilled by the committee on HMRC’s proposed new direct debt recovery powers (DDR).

The powers, announced in this year’s Budget, and which are subject to a consultation closing at the end of this month will allow HMRC to seize debt from individual bank accounts.