Challenging name-search indexing of criminal coverage
A viable challenge to name-search indexing does not require the search engine to accept an innocence claim. It asks a narrower present-tense question: even treating a final conviction as the current legal fact, is it strictly necessary today to make a particular article, judgment, address, photograph, or hostile profile immediately available to everyone who searches the private person’s name?
This distinction matters most where the conviction is recent. Neither Google nor IMY publishes a numerical cutoff, but a conviction from roughly three years earlier will ordinarily be treated as recent. The underlying events may be older and should be dated separately from the investigation, conviction, publication, release, and completion of imposed measures. Time alone is therefore a weak argument. The dossier must instead establish why the form, factual premises, safety effects, and present lack of a relevant public role make continued name indexing disproportionate.
GC and Others C-136 17 supplies the governing rule for criminal-information results. TU and RE v Google C-460 20 supplies a separate route for manifestly inaccurate material facts and image thumbnails. Google private-information removal policy supplies a parallel non-GDPR route for addresses and doxxing.
Keep four questions separate
| Question | Appropriate argument |
|---|---|
| Was the conviction correct? | Use appeal or Resning in Swedish criminal cases, not a search-engine form. |
| Is the article materially inaccurate? | Identify an exact factual statement and supply official evidence that directly disproves it. |
| Is name-linked access strictly necessary now? | Apply the Article 10 balance to the exact URL, current role, publication form, and consequences. |
| Does the page create a personal-safety risk? | Use the separate address and doxxing process, supported by threat evidence and police references. |
An innocence narrative can explain why a separate conviction challenge exists, but it should not dominate the Google or IMY submission. With a final conviction in force, the search engine will normally defer to the judgment. Mixing that dispute into the de-referencing case makes it easier to dismiss the entire request as an attempt to relitigate guilt.
Build an indexed evidence bundle
The strongest submission resembles a small case file, not a personal plea. It should contain only what is necessary and should redact current location details wherever possible.
- Result inventory. Record every exact article, judgment, attachment, image, and cached URL; the name variants that retrieve it; the result position; and dated screenshots of ordinary web and image searches.
- Status evidence. Include the judgment and sentence status, release date, completion of supervision or treatment, and absence of a current child-facing or public role. Completion is evidence about the present balance, not automatic expungement or legal rehabilitation.
- Accuracy schedule. Quote each disputed factual sentence, identify whether it comes from the article or judgment, explain why it is material, and attach a document that directly disproves it.
- Safety schedule. Preserve threats with URLs, timestamps, account identifiers, screenshots, police report numbers, and the specific connection between the threat and publication.
- Consequence schedule. Document employment loss, failed housing or service access, medical effects, relocation, or official protection proceedings where evidence exists.
- Requested remedy. List each URL and name query separately. Ask for name-search de-referencing, separate image-thumbnail removal, and removal of address-bearing results.
Prove the employment point precisely
A statement that a person had child-facing duties can be a material factual claim. Useful evidence may include an employment contract, formal job description, organizational chart, schedule, or signed employer or municipal human-resources statement showing the actual duties and reporting line.
The distinction must be exact. If an article truthfully says only that the person worked at a library, the reader’s inference that every library employee works with children is not itself a manifestly inaccurate factual statement. If it says or clearly asserts that the person worked with children or had special access to them, direct contrary employment evidence can engage C-460/20.
Where the disputed assertion appears in the final judgment itself, Google is unlikely to resolve the contradiction without an official correction, later judgment, or exceptionally strong public documentation. That does not prevent the same evidence from showing that the current safeguarding rationale is weak, but it should not be described as overturning the conviction.
Make two different Google requests
Criminal-information de-referencing
The European data-protection request should say in substance:
I do not ask Google to determine whether the conviction was correct. I ask Google to assess its own current processing of Article 10 data. The exact URLs below appear for searches on my name. I am a private person with no current public or child-facing role. The sentence and imposed measures are complete. The page adds my address, photograph, a full judgment, and claims about my work that the attached official records disprove. Its name-linked visibility has produced the documented threats and consequences in Annexes D and E. The underlying report will remain available by direct access and non-name searches. Continued display for my name is therefore not strictly necessary for freedom of information.
The request should confront the adverse facts candidly: the offence is serious, the conviction is recent, and the source claims a journalistic purpose. It should then explain why those facts do not make the address, photograph, full judgment, material inaccuracy, and permanent name index necessary.
Publication while a person was imprisoned can weaken a claimed need to warn about immediate access at that time. Failure to seek comment does not itself compel de-referencing, but it is relevant to the form of the publication, its verification practice, and the absence of a contemporaneous answer.
If Google has already refused, a renewed submission should identify the prior case reference and lead with new evidence or changed circumstances. Repeating the same narrative is unlikely to change the result. If the first request already contained the full evidence bundle, the better next step is normally an IMY complaint.
Address and doxxing removal
Submit a separate request under Google’s private-information policy. Identify the address or other personal information on each URL, and link every threat that expressly cites, reposts, or responds to the publication. If the threat appears on another indexed URL, report that URL separately as well.
This request should not merely say that harm is foreseeable. It should show the chain:
flowchart LR A["Name query"] --> B["Identifying article"] B --> C["Address, image, or judgment"] B --> D["Threat or harassment post"] C --> E["Locating the person"] D --> E E --> F["Police report or protective action"]
Google may still invoke newsworthiness. The response is not that the offence lacks public interest, but that Google can preserve access to the story without supplying a name-to-address and name-to-photograph index.
Escalate a refusal to IMY
A Google refusal is evidence, not the final legal answer. IMY expressly identifies criminal data, stalking risk, major employment consequences, private-person status, publication form, and present relevance as factors. For criminal information, the result should be removed unless continued display is strictly necessary.
The complaint should attach:
- the original request and every annex;
- Google’s complete response and case reference;
- an exact URL-and-query schedule;
- a short table mapping each IMY factor to evidence;
- a separate section on any material factual inaccuracy;
- a separate request concerning image thumbnails; and
- the narrow remedy sought.
If Google’s response dismisses threats as irrelevant, quote that passage and map it directly to IMY’s published stalking and consequence criteria. Ask IMY to determine whether Google actually performed the required current, URL-specific balance.
IMY has previously enforced de-referencing obligations against Google. Its ability to supervise the search engine does not depend on whether the underlying publisher has a publication certificate.
Use a narrower source-side demand
A demand to erase every reference to a conviction is the least likely source-side request to succeed. A more defensible demand asks the publisher to:
- correct a precisely identified material factual error;
- remove the current or historical home address and personnummer;
- remove the freely downloadable unredacted judgment;
- remove or crop the photograph;
- publish the subject’s concise response;
- stop permitting name-based indexing while keeping the article online; and
- state a review or retention period.
For a YGL-protected database, a lawyer should consider a formal notice under YGL 6:6. For information that began being supplied more than one year earlier, the provision gives the responsible publisher two weeks after notice to remove material that may constitute a publication offence and thereby avoid liability for it. That mechanism makes wording and proof of receipt important. It should be drafted by counsel familiar with YGL, especially if a private defamation action is under consideration.
Legal Newsdesk Sweden C-199 24 also means that a publication certificate does not automatically make every processing operation journalistic under EU law. An edited Dumpen article has a stronger journalism claim than Lexbase, but publication of an unredacted judgment, address, or permanent searchable dossier can still be framed as a distinct and unnecessarily intrusive operation.
Keep conviction review on its own track
Resning in Swedish criminal cases is exceptional and should be handled by criminal appellate counsel. It normally requires new important facts or evidence that would probably have changed the outcome, or another ground in Chapter 58 of the Code of Judicial Procedure. A disagreement with the court’s legal or evidential assessment is not by itself a search-engine argument.
If a conviction is later set aside, proceedings are reopened, or an official correction is issued, that decision becomes new evidence for an immediate renewed Google request.
Execution order
- Preserve all result, threat, and refusal evidence before asking anyone to alter a page.
- Obtain official employment-duty and completion records.
- Submit separate criminal-information, image-search, and doxxing requests to Google.
- Send a narrow correction and minimization demand to the publisher.
- Escalate Google’s refusal to IMY with the indexed evidence bundle.
- Appeal a timely protected-population-registration refusal or make a new evidence-led application where circumstances have changed.
- Have separate YGL and criminal-review specialists assess source litigation and resning.