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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

#191

Post by wang_li »

londons_explore wrote: post #18
nonethewiser wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We should give up with the idea of databases which are 'open' to the public, but you have to pay to access, reproduction isn't allowed, records cost pounds per page, and bulk scraping is denied. That isn't open. How about rate limited?

No. Open is open. Beyond DDoS protections, there should be no limits. If load on the server is a concern, make the whole database available as a torrent. People who run scrapers tend to prefer that anyway. This isn't someone's hobby project run from a $5 VPS - they can afford to serve 10k qps of readonly data if needed, and it would cost far less than the salary of 1 staff member.

You're talking about a tragedy of the commons situation. There is an organic query rate of this based on the amount of public interest. Then there is the inorganic vacuuming of the entire dataset by someone who wants to exploit public services for private profit. There is zero reason why the public should socialize the cost of serving the excess capacity caused by private parties looking to profit from the public data.

I could have my mind changed if the public policy is that any public data ingested into an AI system makes that AI system permanently free to use at any degree of load. If a company thinks that they should be able to put any load they want on public services for free, they should be willing to provide public services at any load for free.

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

#192

Post by mikkupikku »

999900000999 wrote: post #87
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.

Everything should remain absolutely private until after conviction. And only released if it's in the public interest. I'd be very very strict here. I'm a bit weird here though. I basically think the criminal justice system is very harsh. Except when it comes to driving. With driving, at least in America, our laws are a joke. You can have multiple at fault accidents and keep your license. DUI, keep your license. Run i…

Let's say a cop kills somebody in your neighborhood. Some witnesses say it looked like murder to them, but per your wishes the government doesn't say who the cop was and publishes no details about the crime.. for two years, when they then say they cop was found not guilty. And as per your wishes again, even then they won't say anything about the alleged crime, and never will. Is this a recipe for public trust in their government?

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

#193

Post by autoexec »

pjc50 wrote: post #73
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.

This is an extremely thorny question. Not allowing some kind of blank slate makes rehabilitation extremely difficult, and it is almost certainly a very expensive net social negative to exclude someone from society permanently, all the way up to their death at (say) 70, for something they did at 18. There is already a legal requirement to ignore "spent" convictions in some circumstances. However, there's also jobs whi…

> However, there's also jobs which legally require enhanced vetting checks.

I think the solution there is to restrict access and limit application to only what's relevant to the job. If someone wants to be a daycare worker, the employer should be able to submit a background check to the justice system who could decide that the drug possession arrest 20 years ago shouldn't reasonably have an impact on the candidate's ability to perform the job, while a history of child sex offenses would. Employers would only get a pass/fail back.

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

#194

Post by mikkupikku »

LightBug1 wrote: post #107
koito17 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ...

Their system seems to work better for them than our system does for us, so...

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

#195

Post by neallindsay »

andsoitis wrote: post #180
reactordev wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>”Free to ingest and make someones crimes a permanent part of AI datasets resulting in forever-convictions? No thanks.” 1000x this. It’s one thing to have a felony for manslaughter. It’s another to have a felony for drug possession. In either case, if enough time has passed, and they have shown that they are reformed (long employment, life events, etc) then I think it should be removed from consideration. Not expunge…

> Not expunged or removed from record, just removed from any decision making. This made me pause. It seems to me that if something is not meant to inform decision making, then why does a record of it need to persist?

If someone is charged with and found innocent of a crime, you can't just remove that record. If someone else later finds an account of them being accused, they need a way to credibly assert that they were found innocent. Alternately if they are convicted and served their sentence, they might need to prove that in the future.

Sometimes people are unfairly ostracized for their past, but I think a policy of deleting records will do more harm than good.

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

#196

Post by autoexec »

SoftTalker wrote: post #58
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.

Problem is it's very hard to prove what factors were used in a decision. Person A has a minor criminal record, person B does not? You can just say "B was more qualified" and as long as there's some halfway credible basis for that nothing can really be done. Only if one can demonstrate a clear pattern of behavior might a claim of discrimination go anywhere. If a conviction is something minor enough that might be expun…

> You can just say "B was more qualified"

Sometimes can you can't prove B was more qualified, but you can always claim some BS like "B was a better fit for our company culture"

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

#197

Post by squidbeak »

DrScientist wrote: post #76
ultra_nick wrote: post #10

No right to free speech. Then they start jailing people for posts. Then they get rid of juries. Then they get rid of public records. What are they trying to hide?

I think there is a legitimate argument that the names of people who go to court and are either victims or are found innocent of the charges, should not be trivially searchable by anyone. Though I'm not sure stopping this service achieves that. Also - even in the case that somebody is found guilty - there is a fundamental principle that such convictions have a life time - after which they stop showing up on police sea…

This presumably also falls under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 which forbids this kind of citizen data being relayed to third parties without permission. The company don't have a leg to stand on here, which is why it is basing its public appeals now on the impact to its users (journalists). But no company has a right to flout data protection regulations or its agreed conditions of use without serious consequences. Since the data has already been passed on, the breach itself can't be fixed, so it is totally proportionate to order the service to be closed and its data deleted. Frankly, fuck companies with the arrogance to behave this way - cheating agreements and responsibilities in order to make more money, and then expecting indulgence because of the uniqueness of their service.

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

#200

Post by Muromec »

whizzter wrote: post #21
londons_explore wrote: post #6

Something is either public record - in which case it should be on a government website for free, and the AI companies should be free to scrape to their hearts desire... Or it should be sealed for X years and then public record. Where X might be 1 in cases where you don't want to hurt an ongoing investigation, or 100 if it's someone's private affairs. Nothing that goes through the courts should be sealed forever. We s…

Open to research yes. Free to ingest and make someones crimes a permanent part of AI datasets resulting in forever-convictions? No thanks. AI firms have shown themselves to be playing fast and loose with copyrighted works, a teenager shouldn't have their permanent AI profile become "shoplifter" because they did a crime at 15 yo that would otherwise have been expunged after a few years.

>Free to ingest and make someones crimes a permanent part of AI datasets resulting in forever-convictions? No thanks.

Is this the UK thing where PII is part of the released dataset? I know that Ukrainian rulings are all public, but the PII is redacted, so you can train your AI on largely anonymized rulings.

I think it should also be against GDPR to process sensitive PII like health records and criminal convictions without consent, but once it hits the public record, it's free to use.

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