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Europeans have a 'right to be forgotten' online. Should Canadians?
- not_a_cop75 7y agoShould anybody? This could be used to remove accountability, and certainly will.
- VBprogrammer 7y agoI was thinking about the right to be forgotten just the other day. It reminds me of the line "democracy is the worst form of government, except from all of the others which we've tried". Imagine a young person who gets wrapped up in some illegal activity. 30 years later settled down with a wife and kids he goes for a job interview and the person across the desk happens to have googled his name. That to me doesn't feel fair, people should have the ability to avoid their past haunting them forever. Pre-internet the problem was naturally solved. The interviewer could have dug back through all of the local newspapers and happened upon an article but that's incredibly unlikely. Maybe if he was running for public office it might be uncovered. The other side is that politicians and millionaires can use it to hide their dirty secrets. Nothing is perfect though so maybe that is the price we pay.
- Hitton 7y agoThe question is if you should defend the rights of the past offenders or current potential victim. Sure, there might be repercussions for past conduct, but at the end just one person is responsible for it. On the other hand you have potential victims who can't protect themselves by doing background check on potential perpetrator. If you prevent the victim from taking reasonable precautions, aren't you at least a little bit complicit?
- __m 7y agoLike a social credit score?
- Hitton 7y agoAre you trolling? How is erasing past related to social credit score?
- VBprogrammer 7y agoHonestly I'm not sure. If you don't allow someone the opportunity to reform aren't you strong arming then into continuing their criminal behaviour?
- Hitton 7y agoI'm not denying ability to reform to anyone, they just will have to forthcoming about their past and persuade the other party that they have changed and to give them a chance. Definitely better than for instance giving child molester chance to molest another child, defrauder to defraud another victim and so on.
- VBprogrammer 7y agoI think child molestation and other sexual offences are normally dealt with via alternative means. In the UK there is a sex offenders register as well as background checks for people working with children etc.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoOr you could stop trying to be in control of everything.
- cirno 7y ago"Potential victim" sounds a lot like precrime in Minority Report. Either people are once a criminal, always a criminal and should be permanently extricated from society; or people have the ability to grow and deserve a second chance at a normal life. I believe in the latter, as does the justice system that lets people go after their time is served (barring sex offender registries, at least). And I understand that yes, sometimes, we get it wrong and a person reoffends. Life is messy and sometimes unfair, but we have to strike a balance and take some risk sometimes. I further believe that if a person is able to put their criminality behind them, the recidivism rate will drop. If you deny them gainful employment because Google decided a news article from 20 years ago is the most relevant thing about a person, which biases all future potential employers against recruiting him, then I believe they will have far less to lose and are more likely, right or wrong, to take upon them the mindset that, "if you're going to treat me like a criminal, then I am going to act like one!"
- viklove 7y ago> or people have the ability to grow and deserve a second chance at a normal life. Yes, and I should have the ability to judge wether or not they've grown and changed, but I can't do that if I'm not even aware they committed crimes in the past.
- VBprogrammer 7y agoWhat about someone who was raped wanting to have the details of that rape de-indexed?
- cortesoft 7y agoSo you don't think a person deciding whether to go on a date with someone deserves to know they were convicted of rape 15 years ago? > Life is messy and sometimes unfair, but we have to strike a balance and take some risk sometimes. I don't think we should choose what risks someone else has to take. If someone has a rule 'I will never, ever, date anyone who has ever raped anyone', who are we to tell them, "Nope, sorry..... you don't get to have that rule for yourself.... we have decided for you"
- simion314 7y agoLot's of things can be used for bad things like cars and knives. There are checks in place so information that is important for society is not forgotten.
- umvi 7y ago> There are checks in place so information that is important for society is not forgotten. Could you expound on these checks?
- simion314 7y ago>Could you expound on these checks? First tell me where you draw the line? Like X can be forgotten but not Y and I refer at regular people not persons with public interest.
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoGenuine question: Who benefits when everything we ever do, say, etc. is permanently recorded on a grand, systemtic level?
- iamtheworstdev 7y agoWho benefits if we legally create the ability to delete history?
- umvi 7y agocriminals and politicians, mainly
- __m 7y agoExcept it doesn’t apply to them
- notimetorelax 7y agoI think of this as something similar to the ability to expunge court records. It allows people to move on from their mistakes. Of course as everything it can be abused.
- krapp 7y agoThe internet is not, nor was it ever, intended to provide the world a canonical and immutable record of "history." To claim that deleting content from the internet is tantamount to "deleting history" is absurd. It's always been legal for a search engine or a website to unpublish or remove content. The only thing the right to be forgotten does is establish that a person has some form of ownership over content that's published about them, and the right to have it removed in some cases.
- tuscen 7y agoThe internet is effectively history. Real history started with the internet. So deleting something from the internet is deleting history.
- cortesoft 7y agoI really hate the 'right to be forgotten'... it infringes on other people's 'right to remember' I should be able to talk about my experience with someone else in a public forum, even if that information is something that person doesn't want others to know.
- rolltiide 7y ago> I should be able to talk about my experience with someone else in a public forum, even if that information is something that person doesn't want others to know. Europe right to be forgotten only applies to publicly indexed searches, not the content - according to the top court Nothing you said seems to be the reality that exists So just bookmark a page and revisit it later, the tools have existed since the 90s
- curt15 7y agoBut if there were more people like Kim Peek who could recall anything they read, like a walking, talking, search engine, should they be muzzled online?
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y agoIf what they say breaks a law yes. For example in the UK the rehabilitation of offenders act means that once a crime is spent it is an offence to discuss publish information about the crime. This is a classic instance where right to be forgotten is used.
- curt15 7y ago>For example in the UK the rehabilitation of offenders act means that once a crime is spent it is an offence to discuss publish information about the crime. But in that case, wouldn't a news website that provides its archives of old crime stories for the public to read be guilty of that offence? If certain information is illegal to be disseminated, why isn't its actual source held liable or otherwise subject to takedown?
- 7y ago
- criddell 7y ago> Fearing a court could potentially order "politically or religiously sensitive material" be removed, Gratton says she's "not a big fan of the right to be forgotten." What is religiously sensitive material?
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoScientology sacred texts.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoI'm surprised everyone has such black and white views on this. Some things are in the public's interest to record permanently. Some aren't. Laws that respect that distinction are great. Recording everything forever is good in the same way that a total lack of privacy is good. Many things should be transparent, and they should be recorded. But there's room for nuance.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoRight to be forgotten actually clearly stipulates those things. Information that's "of the public interest" cannot be forgotten under RTBF, for instance. It clearly defines the reasons people should be able to have their information forgotten, such as it being false, very out of date, private, etc. Unfortunately, right to be forgotten has a huge weak point: It relies on the party forgetting (often Google or Bing) to decide whether or not RTBF applies, rather than a neutral party such as a court. Criticisms of RTBF have largely surrounded examples where the decisionmaking was faulty, and unfortunately, the entities making the decisions would very much like the legislation to fail. I would far rather RTBF requests be reviewed and approved or rejected by a government office, not a search engine company.
- umvi 7y ago> I would far rather RTBF requests be reviewed and approved or rejected by a government office, not a search engine company. Wouldn't that mean politicians and their cronies can more easily scrub their own histories? Government holding the keys to approve/reject RTBF means it will be biased in favor of self-serving government-related RTBF requests
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoNot necessarily. Governments tend to have pretty decent records and processes of their own. Note all of the difficulties Trump has trying to just make the US government do whatever the heck he feels like on any given day. And the biggest part about these decisions being handled by government is that there would be accountability, records, and appeals, all of which you really don't have when a corporation is making the decision.
- waynesonfire 7y agoI was recently browsing the terms and agreements of a Swiss online merchant and stumbled upon this, 'Swiss law requires us to archive business data for 10+ years. This means that we do not have the right to "forget" you.' [1] It's unclear to me how Europeans have a right to be forgotten given the above. [1] https://www.swissmicros.com/terms.php https://www.swissmicros.com/terms.php
- noodlesUK 7y agoSwitzerland isn’t part of the EU. They are free to have laws that conflict with the EU’s laws.
- waynesonfire 7y agoAh, of course. And the GDPR section on their site is probably for their EU customers.
- taffer 7y agoThis is why laws have exceptions, e.g. one has the right to require that information about oneself be deleted, unless there is another law that requires the retention of the information.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kd3 7y agoWhat about my right to remember?? What right does anyone else have to demand that you forget something? Do they have more say about your body than you yourself? If so, you are a slave. When tech merges with brains will they demand intrusion to delete what they don't want you to remember?
- umvi 7y ago> When tech merges with brains will they demand intrusion to delete what they don't want you to remember? Yes, but only if it is possible to index/search/dump the contents of people's brains. In that case we are walking video cameras violating people's privacy everywhere we go, and it is only logical that we should mandate people get their brains wiped of privacy infringing information. How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public? That is a gross violation of your privacy and illegal theft of your data. Wouldn't you want that person's brain to be wiped of information they have on you to protect your rights?
- thfuran 7y ago>How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public I wouldn't like it but I wouldn't want it to be illegal either.
- nordsieck 7y ago> How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public? You mean like PIs? > That is a gross violation of your privacy and illegal theft of your data. Most people don't like it, but it's certainly not illegal.
- umvi 7y ago> You mean like PIs? Yes, but they have a government-approved license to do so, normal citizens do not. Random civilians aren't allowed to just PI people. In terms of privacy rights, it would be for the best if people had mandatory implants inserted at birth that automatically prevented brains from recording things about other people in public that haven't consented to your recording. I'm thinking something like White Christmas (Black Mirror) where the default is that strangers that haven't opted in are fuzzed out visually and audibly. This would be a huge win for privacy rights.
- kcolford 7y agoI feel that the right to be forgotten is valid because people are irrational and will be prejudiced against a person regardless of how different the current reality is. This would make me want to put a time limit (like you have to wait 10 years or something) rather than allow current/relevant information to be suppressed. I also feel that people don't get to pick and choose. If you want to be forgotten then everything should be forgotten, not just the stuff you don't like.
- temporaryvector 7y agoThe reason I don't like 'right to be forgotten' laws because it feels like it's using the law as a blunt instrument to solve a problem that is cultural in nature. The reason such a law is required is often stated as "What if I, a changed person, am still haunted by something I did 20 years ago?" which to me seems more of a problem with our culture failing to adapt to new technologies. The world changed too rapidly and the culture is too emotion-driven these days, making 'right to be forgotten' laws seem necessary when the problem should, ideally, be solved by education. I don't have the time right now to go into in depth about my thoughts, but I think there needs to be a distinction between 'right to be forgotten' as a cultural value and 'right to be forgotten' as law, the same way there's a distinction between 'freedom of speech' as a value ("I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it") and 'freedom of speech' as law as in the First Amendment. I'm not entirely sure where the line should be drawn, though, that is up for discussion. My thoughts on the matter can be summed up as follows: Blocking some speech from your private website or publishing old racist tweets on your private website should fall in the same category (roughly) as eating an entire birthday cake: Something that shouldn't be illegal but something that should not be seen as good, people who do it should be made aware that what they're doing is not good but that it is their right to do so. The recent controversy about Carson King (the viral Busch Light man) and his old racist tweets and the public reaction to all that come to mind as an example.
- libertine 7y agoI don't think it's a cultural thing, simply because across time when ever you wanted someone to be remembered, or their actions, you would still do it no matter the medium - word of mouth, paper, stone. The problem is bound to the internet medium: how information is spread, indexed and stored, while being cheap - so cheap we can almost claim it's free. It's not a matter of one being a changed person or not. It's simply your right to not have your information indexed, with no intrinsic value attached to it. People wouldn't be featured on an old mass media like newspaper unless such person was "news-worthy" in the eyes of journalists that had to a code of conduct. The internet has no morals or code of conduct.
- rekabis 7y agoThis is still so easy to circumvent. If it is purely by domain, switch away from google.ca and use google.com to get the results you need. If it uses geolocation of any kind, use a VPN that allows you to switch between endpoints, and use an endpoint in the States to bring up Canadian information. In the end, this is nothing more than privacy theatre, in that these changes are only cosmetic and skin-deep. Granted, I am of the firm opinion that all data is sacrosanct, and that the only thing that should be scrubbable from the Internet is misinformation that has been _proven_ to be demonstrably false by a court of law. Things like prior convictions should not be admissible unless you were later cleared of all charges and the convictions are clearly not in the public’s interest.
- parliament32 7y agoPeople keep trying to force the internet to follow country borders but they don't understand it just doesn't work that way. It's kinda like when your vegetarian neighbours keep complaining about BBQ smells wafting over to their property: the wind doesn't know or care about your property lines. I don't think any information should be removed/removable from the internet, as long as there is demand for it. Users need to be a bit more savvy for expecting and identifying misinformation though.