Lords: right to be forgotten is wrong, unworkable, unreasonable

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/30/right-to-be-forgotten-is-wrong

by nthitz • 12 years ago

128 75 12 years ago

wired.co.uk

ape4• 12 years ago

She has a couple good songs but I don't see what Lorde has to do with this. (joke)

Afforess• 12 years ago

Here is a direct quote from the conclusions of the findings:

Our concern is that the practical aspects work for individuals, so we do not want to set expectations which cannot be met. Going beyond the idea of a search engine, if information is so proliferated on the internet, how would it be practical to remove all that information? As a regulator, we only want to enforce things in a way where we can achieve the end results…

We rather doubt whether the Government believe there are "ways to make this practical and workable".

Nice to see some common sense.

pjc502• 12 years ago

The Lords are a repository for common sense more often than you'd think, partly because they don't have to be accountable to the newspapers.

waqf4• 12 years ago

Right, I don't understand why so many legislatures go to the trouble of having a bicameral system, and then make both houses elected which means that both are subject to the same pressures.

x0x04• 12 years ago

that's the opposite of common sense. There is a gulf between making information instantly and trivially accessible -- google's search business -- and it existing at all. For a long time, the relative anonymity afforded by the difficulty and cost of finding information about people worked reasonably well. Google has now upset that apple card (and we well know their attitudes, but in case you don't: their sociopathic ex-ceo wants privacy for himself but not for you.) Effective anonymity (for most, but not all) doesn't require information to be vanished; it just requires it to be expensive or difficult to discover.

edit: and ignoring the recent changes (ie pretending that it's somehow inherently right that everything linked to your name from even 20+ years ago should be instantly and freely discoverable) makes you, well, Google's tool.

waqf4• 12 years ago

"Google has now […]?"

Search engines were doing that 20 years ago, before Google even existed. The only thing that has changed is the amount of information that is posted on the web to be indexed — and the amount of time per week the average person spends using the web.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

The trouble is the data starts to take on a life of its own. Sure, it was difficult to acquire, but now it's there, in that huge collection of data, and getting rid of it is more complicated than

    DROP TABLE x0x0_2003;

Honestly, is there any precedent where reasonable information purges have been required in the past, targeted or otherwise? I would be similarly hard-pressed to selectively erase information from my data, and all I have is a couple hard drives, a filing box, and a number of sales receipts buried in every corner of my life.

twobits4• 12 years ago

We lost that battle, a long time ago. The answer, imo, is to be able to instantly and freely discover everything for the sociopathic ceo TOO.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

If only that common sense arrived with the "porn" filter. Perhaps this insight comes from the whole porn filter thing, because they learned that, too, is unworkable.

bsder• 12 years ago

Nice to see some common sense.

Common sense would propose something workable. Instead, this is proposing straw men in order to try to win the PR battle.

The "right to be forgotten" goes hand-in-hand with "paid his debt to society". It also goes hand-in-hand with "innocent until proven guilty".

The powers that caused this privacy apocalypse in order to profit don't get any support from me until they propose a solution that allows people who are accused of a crime but later exonerated to expunge that information without having to pay for armies of lawyers.

saidajigumi• 12 years ago

The powers that caused this privacy apocalypse in order to profit

Wow, such loaded terminology. Those "powers" are literally nothing more than the logical and direct evolution of digital information technology. You can point fingers at some company or technologist or other, but those are incidental actors amongst a much larger sea change in how information is stored, copied, and transmitted.

Just a very few years ago, the potential ramifications of these changes weren't really apparent to anyone. We're only just now coming to grips with it and like all periods of social change, it's not really clear how to proceed. There are significant and valid questions to be grappled with: if someone has a "right to be forgotten", what other rights and concerns must be balanced against that? Who holds responsibility for this "forgetting"? Google argues that it's unjust for it to shoulder this burden. They may be right -- this problem has so far been tackled by one branch of government in one world jurisdiction. Historically speaking, I think it unlikely this one case will be a full and fair treatment of the issue.

without having to pay for armies of lawyers.

It may be that we've built infrastructure that makes other alternatives, all factors considered (including, but not just the rights of those who've "paid their debts"), not merely inconvenient but impossible in practice. This doesn't even mean that there may not be solutions, but that this approach to modern issues of privacy is a dead end.

Terr_2• 12 years ago

It's counterbalanced by this one:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140729/10593428044/uk-go...

droopyEyelids• 12 years ago

I'd like to bring up the idea of a Jubilee, an ancient idea that might be a guide for how to approach this problem again.

Basically, in the old days, people were able to fuck up their circumstances permanently because they lived in a small village where everyone ended up knowing everything.

Because that's obviously not conducive to a well-functioning society, everyone agreed to forgive and forget (debts at that time) every so many years.

This might be a reasonable way to handle our current data congestion problems. What if companies agreed to flush their user data every ? years?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(biblical)

edit: this isn't an explicit plan, just something to chew on. Also it doesn't address Google's issue, so it's kind of a distraction to the thread i admit.

xchaotic• 12 years ago

7 years is too short a period in modern times, as even digital projects tend to benefit a lot from the old data and it's even more true for ambitious projects like rail or space. Even an average mortgage in western societies is 20+ years so you have to remember for that long at least. And 'forgetting' after 20 or 30 years isn't going to help, like it didn't in the case of the original Spaniard who caused the ruling.

pjc502• 12 years ago

And delete everyone's wikipedia article? And all the blogs and pictures?

seanflyon• 12 years ago

Interesting idea. How would you define "user data"? For example would it include a Wikipedia article you wrote, a news article mentioning you, an email you received...

If you define user data in a more limited sense, I don't think it would satisfy the proponents of the right to be forgotten.

kjksf• 12 years ago

I'm not sure you understand the issue here because on the face of it you suggest that we burn our historical record (newspapers and obliterate website) every 7 years.

The issue here isn't that Google has some information on you that leaks and if Google doesn't have this information then it won't leak.

The issue is that there is a web page, Google indexes that web page (because that's the purpose of a web search engine), someone doesn't like what that page says about him and now they have a way to ask Google to remove that page from Google's index.

It's basically decentralized censorship with frighteningly low standards for removal of information, nonexistent oversight and apparently no penalty for trying to abuse the system.

There is no solution to the "problem" that doesn't involve heavy-handed censorship.

pekk• 12 years ago

So your counter-proposal is heavy-handed public surveillance...

meowface• 12 years ago

The issue here isn't that Google has some information on you that leaks and if Google doesn't have this information then it won't leak.

That's quite a stretch to suggest it won't leak. How about other search engines? How about websites that cache Google's own results and caching?

Karunamon3• 12 years ago

That's actually a pretty clever workaround for some of the issues, but there are others that it does not address.

My main argument against the ""right" to be forgotten" has always been web forums. Think of a European version of HN. Think of a really prolific and insightful contributor to that site. They invoke this law, and EUHN is forced to kill all the posts they ever made.

Context of entire discussion threads will be obliterated.

tormeh4• 12 years ago

It doesn't have to be a European HN, just HN (as accessed from the EU) would maybe be enough. It depends on whether HN is said to be "operating in Europe" or not. I don't really get how it should be enforced, but being on an American server doesn't protect you from EU (or Chinese or Brazilian etc.) law.

twobits4• 12 years ago

Maybe we should instead not have ancient (and modern) prejudices.

twobits4• 12 years ago

Sorry, but it's ridiculous and extremely sad, people even talk and give dignity to the idea of deleting everything every n years.

(Yes, free talk about everything, of course, but it's very sad state of affairs.)

yuhong2• 12 years ago

I don't think things like this is the right solution to the problem, at best it is a workaround.

phkahler• 12 years ago

Any future solution to this should still not be Googles problem. If people are going to be able to have history removed from the net, they should have to have it removed from the net and not just from an index. To cover a lot of this, make some restrictions on distribution of criminal, tax, employment, birth/death records. We already have it in the US for medical records. Some of that information is public records, but why do those have to be free and/or indexed by search engines?

miguelrochefort5• 12 years ago

The fact that we're starting to see people oppose the idea that "privacy is necessary at all cost" is comforting.

I'm really worried about the "solutions" that are starting to emerge to "fix" privacy. It's starting to look eerily like SOPA/PIPA.

mkal_tsr6• 12 years ago

So how do you feel about internet privacy as a whole? I see a post like this and my reaction is, "I don't want everything I do to be public, intended or not" and in that case, I do want privacy. I know if I post a comment on a site, it doesn't go away. But at the same time, I don't want every single page, time, location, and overall history of my life accessible to large corporations. How do you remedy that with the current technical entrenchment in the economy and how it relates to eroding the choice of privacy from individuals? Pure anonymity and pure open-data for all will never work, so where is the balance?

twobits4• 12 years ago

You don't want to, but if someone strong enough gets interested in you, they can. You want privacy. I want privacy. But we don't and won't have any. Only very few and strong can afford that. "Protect privacy" has come to actually mean, protect the strong. We should abolish privacy for all. Not just the de facto, for us.

cortesoft2• 12 years ago

Anyone else interested in making a site that just links to all the pages Google has been forced to remove from their search engine?

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

I don't have the link but it already exists and has been posted on HN a few times.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

http://hiddenfromgoogle.com/

cortesoft2• 12 years ago

So the answer was yes, someone else was interested in making this site.

InclinedPlane2• 12 years ago

Most policies and laws regarding regulation of the internet are wrong, unworkable, and unreasonable. What's one more?

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

It's because they are made by people who don't fully understand the internet. On the other hand most of the people who do understand it are against any regulation of it and would not help in the creation of sane laws.

InclinedPlane2• 12 years ago

That's a part of it. Unfortunately, many people who understand the internet still persist in imagining that what happens on the internet is somehow less real or less consequential than what happens in "real life". In reality the internet is a part of real life, just like movies, or literature, or the telephone, it's not a separate or different place.

dclowd99012• 12 years ago

For me to have the right to be forgotten would mean for you to not have the right to remember me. I think that pretty clearly illustrates the problem.

byerley2• 12 years ago

I think you misunderstand the intent. It's not about making people forget, but rather protecting second chances. At some point, a red mark on your internet accessible past may become akin to ethnicity/gender/ect. It doesn't necessarily reflect the person you are, but it's still statistically prudent for someone else to discriminate based on that information.

This is part of why we have such strict regulations on credit reporting.

wyager2• 12 years ago

but rather protecting second chances.

And third, and fourth, and fifth, and as many times as you can afford to make a legal hassle for someone, chances.

The world isn't always super convenient, and extremely onerous legislation like this definitely won't help.

yuhong2• 12 years ago

I don't think things like this is the right solution to the problem, at best it is a workaround. I don't like anti-discrimination laws either BTW, but that is a different matter.

dclowd99012• 12 years ago

I misunderstand nothing: You don't have a right to second chances either. The world either decides to forgive you or it doesn't. It's not up to you, it's up to them. To impose such a right would be to try to force forgiveness in the minds of others, which, again, pretty clearly illustrates the problem.

oh_sigh2• 12 years ago

I think "Right to be forgotten" should be forced upon the media, not search engines. If the media didn't have the information on their website, then major search engines wouldn't index it.

wyager2• 12 years ago

I think "Right to be forgotten" should be forced upon the media

Awesome idea. "Well, Mr. news agency guy, the president wants this whole 'tax misappropriation scandal' thing to be forgotten. Otherwise, you may run into some legal trouble. After all, it's his right."

oh_sigh2• 12 years ago

How is that any different from what the EU is forcing google to do?

genericacct• 12 years ago

"unworkable"? Yes I am totally ready to accept IT advice by a bunch of people who wear wigs to talk.

Lords: right to be forgotten is wrong, unworkable, unreasonable

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