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Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

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Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#101

Post by dathinab »

nine_k wrote: post #13
harel wrote: post #2

I've looked into the Courtdesk service. It's a stream of events from the courts, as they happen. They claim up to 12,000 updates in a 24 period, aggregated, filtered and organised. While court judgements are public, I don't know if the information Courtdesk provides is. This is a worrying direction.

If the sources of these event data are not public, your worry would be understandable. But if not public, what are these sources then?

They are non-propagated/effectively hidden.

If you don't "know about them from another source" you can't effectively find/access the information and you might not even know that there is something you really should know about.

The service bridged the gap by providing a feed about what is potentially relevant for you depending on your filters etc.

This mean with the change:

- a lot of research/statistics are impossible to do/create

- journalists are prone to only learning about potentially very relevant cases happening, when it's they are already over and no one was there to cover it

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#102

Post by reliabilityguy »

pjc50 wrote: post #83
reliabilityguy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Immigrants cannot commit crimes? This kind of logic does more disservice than people realize. You can combat bigotry towards immigrants (issue #1), without covering up for criminal immigrants (issue #2) in fear of increase of issue #1 among the natives. It only brings up more resentment and bigotry.

Crimes are committed by individuals. "Immigrants" is a group. Prosecution of sexual assault is often handled extremely badly. It needs to be done better, without fear or favor, including people who are friends with the police or in positions of power. As we're seeing the fallout of the Epstein files.

> Crimes are committed by individuals. "Immigrants" is a group.

Great. How does it change the substance of my comment?

Perhaps, instead of arguing about whether “immigrants” is always a group as a collective, or a certain number of individuals acting together, you would focus on the high level implications of government’s action or inaction?

What do Epstein files have to do with anything right now? Stop shifting the goal posts.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#103

Post by JadeNB »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #55
criddell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want the first thing to show up after somebody googles your name to be an accusation for improper conduct around a child? In theory, people could dig deeper and find out you won in court and were acquitted, but people here should know that nobody ever reads the article...

If you were hiring a childminder for your kids, would you want to know that they had 6 accusations for improper conduct around children in 6 different court cases - even if those were all acquittals?

As a parent, I would want to know everything about anyone who's going to be around my children in any capacity. That doesn't mean I have a right to it, though.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#104

Post by harel »

mellosouls wrote: post #8

The title appears to be somewhat misleading. The counter claim by the government is that this isn't "the source of truth" being deleted but rather a subset presented more accessibly by a third party (CourtsDesk) which has allegedly breached privacy rules and the service agreement by passing sensitive info to an AI service. Coverage of the "urgent question" in parliament on the subject here: House of Commons, Courtsde…

They made the data accessible though. From what I can gather, before them, the data was only accessible via old windows apps. If the source of truth is locked and gated, what good is it?

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#105

Post by londons_explore »

newsclues wrote: post #90
spacebanana7 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The names of minors should never be released in public (with a handful of exceptions). But why shouldn't a 19 year old shoplifter have that on their public record? Would you prevent newspapers from reporting on it, or stop users posting about it on public forums?

If you prohibit the punishment of minors, you create an incentive for criminals to exploit minors. Why are we protecting criminals, just because they are minors? Protect victims, not criminals. Unfortunately reputational damage is part of the punishment (I have a criminal record), but maybe it's moronic to create a class of people who can avoid meaningful punishment for crimes?

> If you prohibit the punishment of minors, you create an incentive for criminals to exploit minors.

This - nearly all drug deliveries in my town are done by 15 years olds on overpowered electric bikes. Same with most shoplifting. The real criminals just recruit the schoolchildren to do the work because they know schoolchildren rarely get punishment.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#106

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #78
carlosjobim wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your reasoning? Horrible crimes committed by foreign men against native children were covered up for political reasons in the UK. This is common knowledge.

In the case of Rotherham, I believe that most of those committing the crimes were not foreign; most were British born British nationals. Ethnicity is not the same as immigration status.

[deleted]

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#107

Post by LightBug1 »

koito17 wrote: post #62
londons_explore wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"court records are public forever" and "records of crimes expunged after X years" are incompatible. Instead, we should make it illegal to discriminate based on criminal conviction history. Just like it is currently illegal to discriminate based on race or religion. That data should not be illegal to know, but illegal to use to make most decisions relating to that person.

Even if made illegal, how does enforcement occur? The United States, at least, is notorious for HR being extremely opaque regarding hiring decisions. Then there's cases like Japan, where not only companies, but also landlords, will make people answer a question like: "have you ever been part of an anti-social organization or committed a crime?" If you don't answer truthfully, that is a legal reason to reject you. If…

Jesus ... that gives me a new perspective on Japan ...

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#108

Post by OJFord »

tchalla wrote: post #53
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #38

Better overview of what the complaint was here: https://www.tremark.co.uk/moj-orders-deletion-of-courtsdesk-... They raise the interesting point that "publicly available" doesn't necessarily mean its free to store/process etc: > One important distinction is that “publicly available” does not automatically mean “free to collect, combine, republish and retain indefinitely” in a searchable archive. Court lists and regis…

I can’t believe that this even needs to be said. There are plenty of things which are publicly available but not free to share and definitely not allowed to be made money of.

The company in question had a direct relationship with HM Courts & Tribunals Service, and disputes that they sold/distributed any data to any 'AI third party' - says what they actually did was to hire AI-focussed contractors to build some new tool/feature for the platform.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#109

Post by gib444 »

pjc50 wrote: post #83
reliabilityguy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Immigrants cannot commit crimes? This kind of logic does more disservice than people realize. You can combat bigotry towards immigrants (issue #1), without covering up for criminal immigrants (issue #2) in fear of increase of issue #1 among the natives. It only brings up more resentment and bigotry.

Crimes are committed by individuals. "Immigrants" is a group. Prosecution of sexual assault is often handled extremely badly. It needs to be done better, without fear or favor, including people who are friends with the police or in positions of power. As we're seeing the fallout of the Epstein files.

Oh, it's "nothing to see here" bingo time?:

- Policing language to distract from the topic.

- Trying to claim things are just a series of isolated incidents with absolutely nothing in common

- Claiming there are wider problems (that should be addressed in a manner that would take years and isn't even defined well enough to claim measure as being "better")

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#110

Post by gib444 »

pjc50 wrote: post #78
carlosjobim wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your reasoning? Horrible crimes committed by foreign men against native children were covered up for political reasons in the UK. This is common knowledge.

In the case of Rotherham, I believe that most of those committing the crimes were not foreign; most were British born British nationals. Ethnicity is not the same as immigration status.

Congratulations, you've corrected us on the usage of the word immigrant. Now can we return to the topic?

Whilst we're on Rotherham:

"...by men predominantly of Pakistani heritage" [0]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-61868863

Their parents or grandparents were immigrants...

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