6 ms·

Britain? You mean the country that imprisons people for offensive posts on social media and arrests people connected to journalists under anti-terror laws?

beejiu 13y ago
Fair point, but two wrongs do not make a right. In this case, Google is right that the ruling amounts to censorship. It's an attack on free speech.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Even worse - it opens the gate to Winston Smith's job.
  - SEMW 13y ago
    Data protection legislation is, and always has been, about your ability to control information that's about you. Winston Smith's job was about controlling information that's about other people. Do you really think that's a distinction without a difference?
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      No. But it sets dangerous precedent about what truth is. And we all know how all of this stuff creeps. But if a court can mandate something to be forgotten, what prevents the next case of mandating what could be altered. Does an author have a right his bad books to be forgotten and to claim that he has only bestsellers? Do I have a right to be forgotten about my previous to last disatrous project and only for the last one that was stellar. Does Obama have a right healthcare.gov roll out to be forgotten? Does Bill Clinton and Monica have that right too? This is rewriting history.
      - SEMW 13y ago
        > we all know how all of this stuff creeps. Implying that there's a slippery slope to get from "I can control a company's use of information that's about me" to Winston Smith's job - controlling information about other people - is like saying that suicide being legal is a slippery slope to murder being legal. After all, it's just a difference between me doing it to myself and me doing it to other people, right? > But if a court can mandate something to be forgotten, what prevents the next case of mandating what could be altered. You're forgetting the context of this, which is data protection legislation. The court isn't "mandating something to be forgotten". It's letting someone enforce a right to object to a company processing data relating to them.
DanBC 13y ago
For "offensive" read many repeated credible threats of violence, including rape and death threats.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  Yes, I understand that. But there have also been people arrested for racist remarks, making fun of a death etc.. Undoubtedly these people are assholes but if we had true freedom of speech they would be allowed to speak. My point wasn't that I disagree with these people being arrested it was that if the op thinks Britain has free speech and the rest of the EU doesn't he/she is delusional.
  - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
    Indeed, especially as we're all governed by quite literally the same free speech laws.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      I think k-mcgrady is talking about free speech as a concept independent of the legislation. Allowing the law to redefine free speech is a dangerous idea.
  - vixin 13y ago
    Yes, correct. It's a big concern. Trivially we all remember the student arrested (though later released) for jovially referring to a policeman's horse as 'gay'. As if calling someone or something 'gay' is an insult! How do they work that out? But away from the EU we can find ways of getting this nonsense out of our system and maybe slowly return to sanity.
ZenPro 13y ago
If you are going to be condescending at least stay factual; the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain is simply an island. Can you be specific about which legal cases you are in outrage over? If you are talking about David Miranda then he was lucky that we treated him so leniently. As a former military intelligence operator I wrote a piece on the detention: http://urbantimes.co/2013/11/the-david-miranda-detention-why-the-government-was-right-and-greenwald-was-wrong/ http://urbantimes.co/2013/11/the-david-miranda-detention-why... We were exceptionally lenient and reasonable in our treatment of David Miranda, regardless of what the general populace think. He was a foreign national, in possession of UK Top Secret documentation, held on a non-secure IT system, and he was not a journalist. Why would anybody in their right mind think we would allow a foreign national to waltz off with our material is beyond me. Replace "David Miranda" with "Chinese Hacker" or "North Korean Diplomat" and ask whether the detention would have been lawful then. “A Chinese computer hacker was arrested with 58,000 TOP SECRET files from the UK intelligence community. He was spoken to for 9 hours and released without charge. He is requesting the return of his computer.” The UK public would be up in arms if our police services released that individual back to his host nation. You think you get a free pass for being the partner of Glenn Greenwald?
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  "He was a foreign national, in possession of UK Top Secret documentation, held on a non-secure IT system, and he was not a journalist." He was in possession of copies of UK Top Secret documentation. Given that other copies of the documents exist outside the UK and its legal jurisdiction, what exactly would be the point of detaining him?
  - ZenPro 13y ago
    I can see how you would arrive at that conclusion, it is also a point I deal with in the article. Detaining was merely a means to removing the documents from his possession. Nothing more. Miranda was not intimidated and he also refused legal counsel. However, let's take a less emotionally charged example. A man breaks into your house - makes copies of all of your ID's, your bank records, passwords, logins, hard copies of your keys to your residence in a plasticine mould. Enough to considerably damage your financial, emotional and professional well being. He also makes copies of anything regarding your family including schooling, medical, financial records and keys to whatever they own. All of the material is then copied by a third party. Two copies now exist. The police contact you and inform you that they can detain the one of the individuals with copies of your material but the other copies still remain at large in the real world. By your logic, that man could neither be detained, questioned or have the copies removed from his possession. As any serious penetration tester/corporate investigator will tell you. It does not matter how many copies of data exist, you have a legal responsibility to remove from circulation the copies that you can remove from circulation. In your mind, once multiple copies of data exist then no further law enforcement action is required. Those involved in industrial espionage just voted for you en masse. I assume that if I enter your place of work, copy all of the IP, pass the copies to a third party you now believe I am free to go and can keep the IP in my possession?

beejiu 13y ago

Fair point, but two wrongs do not make a right. In this case, Google is right that the ruling amounts to censorship. It's an attack on free speech.

venomsnake 13y ago
Even worse - it opens the gate to Winston Smith's job.
- SEMW 13y ago
  Data protection legislation is, and always has been, about your ability to control information that's about you. Winston Smith's job was about controlling information that's about other people. Do you really think that's a distinction without a difference?
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    No. But it sets dangerous precedent about what truth is. And we all know how all of this stuff creeps. But if a court can mandate something to be forgotten, what prevents the next case of mandating what could be altered. Does an author have a right his bad books to be forgotten and to claim that he has only bestsellers? Do I have a right to be forgotten about my previous to last disatrous project and only for the last one that was stellar. Does Obama have a right healthcare.gov roll out to be forgotten? Does Bill Clinton and Monica have that right too? This is rewriting history.
    - SEMW 13y ago
      > we all know how all of this stuff creeps. Implying that there's a slippery slope to get from "I can control a company's use of information that's about me" to Winston Smith's job - controlling information about other people - is like saying that suicide being legal is a slippery slope to murder being legal. After all, it's just a difference between me doing it to myself and me doing it to other people, right? > But if a court can mandate something to be forgotten, what prevents the next case of mandating what could be altered. You're forgetting the context of this, which is data protection legislation. The court isn't "mandating something to be forgotten". It's letting someone enforce a right to object to a company processing data relating to them.

DanBC 13y ago

For "offensive" read many repeated credible threats of violence, including rape and death threats.

k-mcgrady 13y ago
Yes, I understand that. But there have also been people arrested for racist remarks, making fun of a death etc.. Undoubtedly these people are assholes but if we had true freedom of speech they would be allowed to speak. My point wasn't that I disagree with these people being arrested it was that if the op thinks Britain has free speech and the rest of the EU doesn't he/she is delusional.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  Indeed, especially as we're all governed by quite literally the same free speech laws.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    I think k-mcgrady is talking about free speech as a concept independent of the legislation. Allowing the law to redefine free speech is a dangerous idea.
- vixin 13y ago
  Yes, correct. It's a big concern. Trivially we all remember the student arrested (though later released) for jovially referring to a policeman's horse as 'gay'. As if calling someone or something 'gay' is an insult! How do they work that out? But away from the EU we can find ways of getting this nonsense out of our system and maybe slowly return to sanity.

ZenPro 13y ago

If you are going to be condescending at least stay factual; the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain is simply an island. Can you be specific about which legal cases you are in outrage over? If you are talking about David Miranda then he was lucky that we treated him so leniently. As a former military intelligence operator I wrote a piece on the detention: http://urbantimes.co/2013/11/the-david-miranda-detention-why-the-government-was-right-and-greenwald-was-wrong/ http://urbantimes.co/2013/11/the-david-miranda-detention-why... We were exceptionally lenient and reasonable in our treatment of David Miranda, regardless of what the general populace think. He was a foreign national, in possession of UK Top Secret documentation, held on a non-secure IT system, and he was not a journalist. Why would anybody in their right mind think we would allow a foreign national to waltz off with our material is beyond me. Replace "David Miranda" with "Chinese Hacker" or "North Korean Diplomat" and ask whether the detention would have been lawful then. “A Chinese computer hacker was arrested with 58,000 TOP SECRET files from the UK intelligence community. He was spoken to for 9 hours and released without charge. He is requesting the return of his computer.” The UK public would be up in arms if our police services released that individual back to his host nation. You think you get a free pass for being the partner of Glenn Greenwald?

andyjohnson0 13y ago
"He was a foreign national, in possession of UK Top Secret documentation, held on a non-secure IT system, and he was not a journalist." He was in possession of copies of UK Top Secret documentation. Given that other copies of the documents exist outside the UK and its legal jurisdiction, what exactly would be the point of detaining him?
- ZenPro 13y ago
  I can see how you would arrive at that conclusion, it is also a point I deal with in the article. Detaining was merely a means to removing the documents from his possession. Nothing more. Miranda was not intimidated and he also refused legal counsel. However, let's take a less emotionally charged example. A man breaks into your house - makes copies of all of your ID's, your bank records, passwords, logins, hard copies of your keys to your residence in a plasticine mould. Enough to considerably damage your financial, emotional and professional well being. He also makes copies of anything regarding your family including schooling, medical, financial records and keys to whatever they own. All of the material is then copied by a third party. Two copies now exist. The police contact you and inform you that they can detain the one of the individuals with copies of your material but the other copies still remain at large in the real world. By your logic, that man could neither be detained, questioned or have the copies removed from his possession. As any serious penetration tester/corporate investigator will tell you. It does not matter how many copies of data exist, you have a legal responsibility to remove from circulation the copies that you can remove from circulation. In your mind, once multiple copies of data exist then no further law enforcement action is required. Those involved in industrial espionage just voted for you en masse. I assume that if I enter your place of work, copy all of the IP, pass the copies to a third party you now believe I am free to go and can keep the IP in my possession?