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Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

bbc.com

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Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#61

Post by sdenton4 »

mrtksn wrote: post #25
Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

Mark steal cookies, gets caught and serves his sentence in jail. Now Mark is out, looking for a job as a JavaScript developer but when Mark is Googled to check about his involvement in OS projects and personal portfolio before his Github profile the article on CNN from 5 years ago is displayed and apparently Mark is a cookie monster. Is Mark sentenced to never be employed again? Mark made a mistake but Is He really w…

Don't employers use actual background checks for this, though? With rules for what stays on the record and what disappears after a set number of years?

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#62

Post by adam-a »

jasode wrote: post #35
Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

>As a society, we approve of jail being the mechanism to "forgive" a person's crime. That's not really true. Serving prison time is neither a way to "forgive" nor a way to "pay debt back to society" . Those are just common phrases some people use. If felons were truly forgiven , they would have their right to vote restored. They wouldn't be denied a passport to travel abroad or denied a firearms license. Convicted fe…

Note that in many countries, the UK for example, you can vote and get a passport if you have a criminal record. I think it makes sense that this verdict was delivered in Europe where it seems the view on ex-convicts is a bit more generous than in America.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#63

Post by volak »

jlarocco wrote: post #57
volak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is future employers don't know if mark made a one time mistake or is a serial cookie monster. Why would they hire mark over a similar employee with a clean record? Mark needs to be given the opportunity to demonstrate to an employer hes no longer a cookie monster. He needs to rebuild that trust. He would do this by taking a lower than average pay, agreeing to periodic cookie-tests, and giving the employer…

> If mark really isn't a cookie monster anymore he should be fine with this precautions to minimize the company's risk - after a year or so when there is more trust these disappear. The problem is that "mark" will be bogged down with that punishment for the rest of his life at every job he works, so the punishment doesn't fit the crime. Being a former "cookie monster" should not mean a lifetime of lower pay and fewer…

Not true - if mark has a resume listing a successful employment post-cookie incident I would call them for a reference. A good reference isn't completely trustworthy but 2 or 3 of them with good companies and I'd be convinced.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#64

Post by octorian »

danielfoster wrote: post #15
Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

If this is the case, then the government should pass laws forbidding discrimination on the basis of criminal record. Instead they've passed the puck (rather badly) to Google. And it's not like Google is the only way to find things. Should newspapers be required to delete pages about an individual or destroy print copies? What about other search engines such as Yandex or Baidu? Of course anyone could just search on Go…

> Mankind has done perfectly well without a "right to be forgotten" for hundreds of thousands of years.

Because mankind had a de-facto "right to be forgotten" that could be exercised by simply moving to a different community.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#65

Post by volak »

octorian wrote: post #59
volak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is future employers don't know if mark made a one time mistake or is a serial cookie monster. Why would they hire mark over a similar employee with a clean record? Mark needs to be given the opportunity to demonstrate to an employer hes no longer a cookie monster. He needs to rebuild that trust. He would do this by taking a lower than average pay, agreeing to periodic cookie-tests, and giving the employer…

And once Mark rebuilds trust with company A, all is good. Until, that is, Mark decides to get a new job. Once Mark goes to company B, they find the cookie monster article and make Mark completely rebuild trust from scratch. Then Mark has to move, and goes to company C. The cycle repeats again. Thus Mark is never able to truly get over the cookie monster incident.

Not true - if mark has a resume listing a successful employment post-cookie incident I would call them for a reference. A good reference isn't completely trustworthy but 2 or 3 of them with good companies and I'd be convinced.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#66

Post by 282883392 »

izacus wrote: post #50
jasode wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a society, we approve of jail being the mechanism to "forgive" a person's crime. That's not really true. Serving prison time is neither a way to "forgive" nor a way to "pay debt back to society" . Those are just common phrases some people use. If felons were truly forgiven , they would have their right to vote restored. They wouldn't be denied a passport to travel abroad or denied a firearms license. Convicted fe…

This is not how a lot of EU countries function - which is why there's friction there. The American "You are a criminal for life and will eternally be punished!" attitude is clashing with an EU mindset of being able to start a new life. Permanent records are hugely damaging for persons livelihood in these cases.

Can you not change your name in the EU? Seems like someone changing their name would be able to solve some of these issues.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#67

Post by kodablah »

mrtksn wrote: post #25
Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

Mark steal cookies, gets caught and serves his sentence in jail. Now Mark is out, looking for a job as a JavaScript developer but when Mark is Googled to check about his involvement in OS projects and personal portfolio before his Github profile the article on CNN from 5 years ago is displayed and apparently Mark is a cookie monster. Is Mark sentenced to never be employed again? Mark made a mistake but Is He really w…

> Is Mark sentenced to never be employed again?

This is not Google's fault and they should not be the one's being punished. If a government wants to have a say here they can, but in general society will act on information and you can't hide it from them.

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#68

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mattnewton wrote: post #16

I think that simply deleting references to information is a crude way to solve this problem. People who want to continue to bias against ex-convicts (like landlords and employers) will use background check services that aren’t regulated here, but the general public will be deprived easy access to information. This seems ripe for abuse, especially for government officials.

Wouldn't it be far worse to delete the original information? It's better to just make it harder for someone's life to be ruined by it, don't you think?

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#69

Post by comboy »

abritinthebay wrote: post #26
comboy wrote: post #19

It's absolutely insane what they are doing (EU). Should libraries remove newspapers with my name if I don't like what's written there about me? It's pure censorship. It all stems from the fact that society hasn't yet adjusted to the reality that not everything on the Internet is true. People share between themselves lots of false beliefs. The Internet is just another medium. The problem is that if I put up a billboar…

You say it’s doable. How?

I'm glad you asked :)

I want to publish a website with thoughts so far and looking for more brains. What I have in mind is a global, multilayered web of trust. It would be a game changer.

Of course, I don't mean it as a startup, it must be decentralized. I don't care who creates it, I just really want to have it.

I'm sure you know about the small world effect[1]. Example of layer: coding skill. I assign weights to friends I know. Now if I want to know if X is a good coder I check what friends of my friends think about it and multiply it by weights I have assigned to those friends (recursive). But it's much more than just having reasonable opinion about coding skill of somebody who you want to hire or cooperate with.

The crucial thing is that this rating is always relative. It depends on your place in the network. Any global rating can be and will be cheated. Also, it's perfectly fine that for different group of people different things have different values.

It enables trustworthy reviews, trustworthy project dependencies, tenants, online stores, doctors, mechanics etc. Could probably help with scams and spam. If successful it has power to change politics inside out.

I'm sorry I don't have a write up yet and I know that with an analytic mind you probably can find many problems with the potential implementation.

Let's be clear, it's hard. But so very worth it. There are many problems to solve. Apart from bootstrapping it (which could probably be done with help of some other services) The big one to me is privacy. If I assign 2/10 coding skill to one of my friends I don't want him to find out. I've already came up with some potential solutions. But more people, preferably with cryptography background and definitely smarter than me are needed, who are interested in this problem and are willing to spend time thinking about it.

I'm going to try to collect all my notes and thoughts into a website and post it on HN.

(If you were able to deduce enough from this short description, you like it and you're interested, drop me an empty e-mail at wot@comboy.pl, I'll send you a single e-mail when I have some place to point to)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_experiment

Re: Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case

#70

Post by pjc50 »

danielfoster wrote: post #15
Elessar wrote: post #8

We're rapidly moving to a point where an official (government) criminal record is not important to folks you want to interact with -- landlords, employers etc. They will instead turn to Google. As such, Google might as well be the official record for many people. And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice. I don't know…

If this is the case, then the government should pass laws forbidding discrimination on the basis of criminal record. Instead they've passed the puck (rather badly) to Google. And it's not like Google is the only way to find things. Should newspapers be required to delete pages about an individual or destroy print copies? What about other search engines such as Yandex or Baidu? Of course anyone could just search on Go…

> government should pass laws forbidding discrimination on the basis of criminal record

They did. https://www.gov.uk/exoffenders-and-employment

"It’s against the law to refuse someone a job because they’ve got a spent conviction or caution, unless it’s because a DBS check shows that they’re unsuitable."

> Mankind has done perfectly well without a "right to be forgotten" for hundreds of thousands of years.

Mankind has done without total digital records of everyone's life, too. Now that we have those records, are they going to be used to make people's lives worse?

I feel this would be less controversial if it was "right to be de-indexed": finding a newspaper from a particular date should show the same information, but "find me all information relating to Joe Bloggs" is a much more complicated question.

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