Any thoughts on this new "right to be forgotten" issue:
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=r...o+be+forgotten

In realistic terms it would be equivalent to censorship or worse e.g. if someone published something in a magazine and wanted it gone the police would come to your house to confiscate the magazine. Of course, this would happen purely online for now, but this is the general direction in which they are going.

On the opposite side, there are websites that post your mugshot and criminal record and will take them down for "a small processing fee" - basically extortion.

Not quite the flip side, that's more like the already illegal side.

I basically don't think that it is "censorship" for someone to assert that they have the right not to have information about themselves "spread far and wide," even if that information is "publicly available."

I don't agree with your analogy that someone would "break into your house and take back your magazine." They can't do anything about the copies that have already been sold, but they can cause the material to cease future publication.

As with many other legal cases, I think that the dividing line is – "what you do with it." Do you have a say with regard to what is "published far and wide" about you? Yes, I think you do. For instance, if you suddenly found personal details about you on the online equivalent of a supermarket checkout-stand tabloid, you might quite-rightly demand that this information be taken down, even if the information is true(!) and especially if you think that it isn't. You're not a celebrity who signed-away the rights to his or her likeness as a media-property. You're a private individual who suddenly finds something about yourself being transmitted at high decibels on a world-wide loudspeaker.

This isn't about something that will be published, but rather about something that has already been published.

Certainly I don't want my details published beyond what I allow, but this is different, it's about something that has already been said and done and published and now taking it down ... like erasing history. That's very dangerous IMO, probably the most dangerous type of censorship.

If the information being published about you is inaccurate or defamatory you can file a lawsuit and depending on the outcome it will be taken down, but this totally different, this doesn't go to court. People with bad reputations want to clean up their past the easy way, which is very dangerous for the rest of us.

This guys paycheck comes from the NSA and he expects privacy? Its just too ridiculous for words.
The "right to be forgotten" is censorship and we dont need an NSA lawyer setting a precedent like this, or anyone for that matter.

Insert <politician_name> here.

I thought an NSA lawyer would feel powerful enough to not need to care about stuff like this.

How is that extortion? Maybe the dumbasses would think twice before doing what they want to do if they knew that they can't run away from their arrests.


I'd also let people sue the police for false arrest more readily, with one of the damages components being that now your mug shots are fair game to the world, and the cops' drag net approach to crowd control or whatever caused harm to a lot of innocent by-standers.

It's censorship. Plain, pure, and simple. The Spanish lawyer who found his past tax problems an embarrassment should not be able to hide the fact that for whatever reason, he didn't pay his taxes when he was supposed to.

Okay, let's say you got a parking ticket, or some misdemeanor ticket that's embarrassing to you. And, suddenly you find your mug-shot ... which is "public information, already published by the sheriff's department" ... on billboards all over the country. And you are being told that you have no right to demand that these billboards be taken down, because the mug shots are "public information?" I think not, and, if such a thing were to happen to you, neither would you.

So far, we've asserted that every piece of information that can possibly be gathered, should be gathered (by private companies as well as public agencies), and that there should be no restrictions on anyone doing whatever they please with it ... keeping it forever ... analyzing it ... and placing vast databases in the hands of "marketing" subcontractors who live god-knows-where. The mere fact that my mail-server handled your e-mail message should not mean that you are entitled, not only to keep it, but to dissect it. And so on.

This is the first, albeit dim, awareness of "the other side of" the Internet coin. The awareness that we have unlocked a Pandora's box the likes of which has never been opened before, and that we don't know what to do with it yet. We don't know how to properly balance the various competing concerns. Even though each of them "in isolation" might seem, or at least be intened to be, innocuous, "the whole of them together" is not. And we don't yet fully understand how it is not. This stuff is all just too new. We haven't written the laws and public policies yet, and we've only barely begun to discuss what they should be. There is a lot of work to be done, all over the world. A lot of talking. We must get started. And I think that we, in the data processing profession, should especially be pushing those discussions, leading them ... not arguing that they should not take place.

1. You don't get arrested and processed for parking tickets. You get arrested and processed for having a hundred of them outstanding, which shows that you are a scofflaw displaying an "up yours" attitude towards the small rules that help make our civilization (such as parking regulations). Guess what? Allowing it to be publicized will probably change your attitude displays towards paying your parking fines (more pelf for the exchequer and better traffic control all around) and general conduct.

2. I loath marketing people as much as the next guy, but if you want a free service, like gmail, you agree to them reading your e-mail and targeting ads. Don't like it? Don't sign the contract. Can't be bothered to read the contract? You are an idiot. Do what I do. Important e-mail uses a paid service that protects my privacy. I use gmail for unimportant stuff, and occasionally put something out to friends or family that's really rim-shot just to screw with Google's analytics of me.

3. No one is saying that every piece of data that can be gathered should be gathered (except the NSA). But if gathered and accurate, public policy should allow its dissemination.

In these discussions, one side usually says that we shouldn't live in a police state with surveillance and censorship, while the other side says that if you nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about, which justifies the police state. However these statements do not contradict each other:

• You should be able to take privacy for granted (we should not have a police state)
• If you need privacy, then you are most likely a creep

If you are worried about someone posting your mugshot and criminal record, then maybe you shouldn't commit crimes. In some countries criminals are executed without a trial. I don't care about their "right" to not be embarrased.

Once upon a time, I actually got a parking ticket. Feel free to put it on a billboard and see if I care. What have you done that is so horrible that you don't want anyone to know about it? And to make the legal system force people to shut up about it?

Of course this is censorship! As the venerable news channel (Kremlin propaganda outlet) RT put it: the right to be forgotten has to be weighed against the right to know. If a pedophile moves into your neighbourhood, does he also have the right to be forgotten? Should it be illegal to tell the truth to protect creeps?

Keep in mind that we are not talking about libel here. That's already illegal. This is about disseminating facts.

We had a similar situation in Sweden a while ago: the question about LexBase. This is a website where you can search for people's criminal records. It's all public information and has been for decades -- they just made it more accessible to the public. Suddenly there is a moral panic: should it be legal to tell people about the illegal things that other people have done?

By the way, the purpose of this law is most likely to protect those who are in charge, so they can coerce people into removing embarrasing information about themselves. It's amazing how our democratic leaders never fail to think up new laws that bring us closer and closer to a totalitarian Bolshevic hellhole.

I need privacy and am not a creep.

I suspect you only want it then. A person who needs it really has something to hide, i.e. would go to jail if the police searched his house or looked on his harddrive.

It depends on how smart that person is.

As for the "nothing to hide" argument, this works very well for people who believe they are above the rest. It plays on people's pride and arrogance of which there is plenty of. You really think ANYONE ANYWHERE has nothing to hide. You find me one such person and I'll find you Jesus or other major religious figure. You've got to think logically and face the facts, EVERYONE has something to hide and the higher you go the more they have to hide, but they are also in a position to be able to hide. So, do be very weary of people higher than you telling you that you have "nothing to hide". You do what you want tho, but personally I'd just tell them to show me theirs first.