Google gets sued by Argentine vice-president called thief browsing result
Former Argentinian president Cristina Kirchner announced on Thursday that she has filed a defamation lawsuit against internet giant Google following its engine search allegedly discovered her as a “thief.”
The complaint is due to May 17 when a Google search into Kirchner’s name returned an outcome with “Thief of the Argentine Nation” in where her political position-she happens to be the country’s vice-president-should have been, local press reported.
“Today I filed a obtain technological expertise against Google which will form evidence for a lawsuit,” Kirchner, who's facing charges from nine separate cases, some for corruption during her time as president, wrote on Twitter.
She has twice been ordered into pre-trial detention, although her parliamentary immunity has spared her actual jail time.
“When lies and defamations are fired from massive platforms, there’s no limit to their circulation, they can not be contained and the damage they do to the defamed is incalculable,” added Kirchner, who has been accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes.
Kirchner said her lawsuit aimed also to determine whether there is any sort of “possible defense for folks who are victims of this sort of action perpetrated by technological giants like Google.”
Her lawyers are seeking information about how long the alleged search result remained set up and just how many times it had been viewed.
The lawsuit states that it might be “difficult to calculate” just how much damage had been done to Kirchner’s reputation without the answers to those questions.
It said the choice job title appeared on the Google platform “without discussing a website of any alternative party but under its sole orbit and responsibility.”
Kirchner, 67, who succeeded her late husband Nestor as president and served two conditions from 2007-15, claims she is the victim of “political persecution.”
The cases against her were brought through the tenure of her successor as president, Mauricio Macri (2015-19) and mostly by the late anti-corruption judge Claudio Bonadio, who died of cancer in February.
One of his most well-known cases against Kirchner was the so-called corruption notebooks scandal.
It revolves around meticulous records kept by a government chauffeur, Oscar Centeno, of cash bribes-allegedly worth $160 million between 2005 and 2015-he is said to have delivered from businessmen to government officials.
