3 ms·

It's sad that a law like this is needed at all. It seems like a matter of common decency to remove data about someone upon request. People that are willing to

by kriro 14y ago

It's sad that a law like this is needed at all. It seems like a matter of common decency to remove data about someone upon request. People that are willing to fight a trade war (whatever that is supposed to mean) over this are so far removed in their worldview from my own that it's actually quite shocking. While we're at it I'd really appreciate if my bank data wouldn't be shipped off to the US. Pricacy terrorists at work over there.

mcintyre1994 14y ago
Sure, it's common decency to be reasonable and delete data if requested. But this law seems to go a bit too far and make things a bit too difficult. According to the linked article, the person you're requesting to remove the data is also liable for any third parties that have it - and should take reasonable steps to ensure they remove it. Can you imagine the logistics of Twitter removing every reference to all tweets by xyz in a timely fashion? How about Google removing data from their search engine and making sure any number of aggregators etc also remove it? How can a company even know what's being done with public data? The law says personal data - there's certainly people sharing personal data publicly, making this effectively impossible to enforce. The EU are right to be thinking about how to apply their privacy directive to the internet age - the current situation isn't working. However, they need to be a bit sensible here and realise that when data has been made public with a person's permission (eg Tweeted), it's that person's responsibility, not eg Twitter's. EDIT: That's not even considering backups etc - we expect these services to work, so it's reasonable to expect and permit them to make backups. If I want to be forgotten with a reasonable degree of confidence, I'd need them to delete information about me from all their backups too. Maybe your average Wordpress blog doesn't have a nightly backup, but if it's picked up by a tech site/Reddit/HN, you can be sure they do - so I'd want it deleted from all of their backups too. An unenforceable law that claims that people have more protection than is technically reasonably possible is not an improvement in my opinion - people should know what's happening with their data, and shifting whose lying/misleading from companies to Government is not an improvement.
devicenull 14y ago
So, what happens when the scammer that's been abusing your service asks for his information to be deleted? Now you have no information on him, and he can just continue to abuse your services over and over again.

by kriro 14y ago

mcintyre1994 14y ago

Sure, it's common decency to be reasonable and delete data if requested. But this law seems to go a bit too far and make things a bit too difficult. According to the linked article, the person you're requesting to remove the data is also liable for any third parties that have it - and should take reasonable steps to ensure they remove it. Can you imagine the logistics of Twitter removing every reference to all tweets by xyz in a timely fashion? How about Google removing data from their search engine and making sure any number of aggregators etc also remove it? How can a company even know what's being done with public data? The law says personal data - there's certainly people sharing personal data publicly, making this effectively impossible to enforce. The EU are right to be thinking about how to apply their privacy directive to the internet age - the current situation isn't working. However, they need to be a bit sensible here and realise that when data has been made public with a person's permission (eg Tweeted), it's that person's responsibility, not eg Twitter's. EDIT: That's not even considering backups etc - we expect these services to work, so it's reasonable to expect and permit them to make backups. If I want to be forgotten with a reasonable degree of confidence, I'd need them to delete information about me from all their backups too. Maybe your average Wordpress blog doesn't have a nightly backup, but if it's picked up by a tech site/Reddit/HN, you can be sure they do - so I'd want it deleted from all of their backups too. An unenforceable law that claims that people have more protection than is technically reasonably possible is not an improvement in my opinion - people should know what's happening with their data, and shifting whose lying/misleading from companies to Government is not an improvement.

devicenull 14y ago

So, what happens when the scammer that's been abusing your service asks for his information to be deleted? Now you have no information on him, and he can just continue to abuse your services over and over again.