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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

#241

Post by reactordev »

fao_ wrote: post #220
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…

> There needs to be a statute of limitations just like there is for reporting the crimes. The UK does not have a statute of limitations

No? So I can report a petty theft from 35 years ago?

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

#242

Post by adw »

Sanzig wrote: post #228
bko wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it should be removed from consideration. Not expunged or removed from record, just removed from any decision making. The timeline for this can be based on severity with things like rape and murder never expiring from consideration. That's up to the person for the particular role. Imagine hiring a nanny and some bureaucrat telling you what prior arrest is "relevant". No thanks. I'll make that call myself.

Many countries have solved this with a special background check. In Canada we call this a "vulnerable sector check," [1] and it's usually required for roles such as childcare, education, healthcare, etc. Unlike standard background checks, which do not turn up convictions which have received record suspensions (equivalent to a pardon), these ones do flag cases such as sex offenses, even if a record suspension was issu…

In the UK the equivalent is a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check.

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

#243

Post by reactordev »

dvdkon wrote: post #178
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…

That seems compatible with OP's suggestion, just with X being a large value like 100 years, so sensitive information is only published about dead people. At some point, personal information becomes history, and we stop caring about protecting the owner's privacy. The only thing we can disagree on is how long that takes.

Right, except there are some cases where that information should be disclosed prior to their death. Sensitive positions, dealing with child care, etc. but those are specific circumstances that can go through a specific channel. Like we did with background checks. Now, AI is in charge and ANY record in ANY system is flagged. Whether it’s for a rental application, or a job, or a credit card.

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

#244

Post by krona »

flufluflufluffy wrote: post #235
krona wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This database exposed half a million weekend cases which were heard with zero press notification. Many grooming gang trials were heard this way. The database is being deleted weeks before the national inquiry into the grooming gang cover up begins, and the official reason for deleting the data is nonsensical.

The data is publicly available. The data being deleted is the private company’s own copy of it.

Data being "available" and it being accessible/searchable are two completely different things.

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

#245

Post by Aperocky »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #209
evaXhill wrote: post #3

Seems quite absurd that they would shut down the only system that could tell journalists what was actually happening in the criminal courts under the pretext that they sent information to a third-party AI company (who doesn’t these days). Here’s a rebuttal by one of the founders i believe: https://endaleahy.substack.com/p/what-the-minister-said

> (who doesn’t these days) Absolutely fucking crazy that you typed this out as a legitimate defense of allowing extremely sensitive personal information to be scraped. > only system that could tell journalists what was actually happening in the criminal courts Who cares? Journalism is a dead profession and the people who have inherited the title only care about how they can mislead the public in order to maximize pro…

Information is either public or it is not.

If it is public, it will be scraped, AI companies are irrelevant here.

If information is truly sensitive, do not make it public, and that's completely fine. This might have been the case here.

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

#246

Post by reactordev »

mschuster91 wrote: post #158
piperswe wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has common law: the outcomes of previous court cases and the arguments therein determine what the law is. It’s important that court records be public then, because otherwise there’s no way to tell what the law is.

> It’s important that court records be public then, because otherwise there’s no way to tell what the law is. So anyone who is interested in determining if a specific behavior runs afoul of the law not just has to read through the law itself (which is, "thanks" to being a centuries old tradition, very hard to read) but also wade through court cases from in the worst case (very old laws dating to before the founding o…

You are correct which is why I recently built such a tool. Well, an evidence management tool.

The premise here is, during an investigation, a suspect might have priors, might have digital evidence, might have edge connections to the case. Use the platform and AI to find them, if they exist.

What it doesn’t do: “Check this video and see if this person is breaking the law”.

What it does do: “Analyze this persons photos and track their movements, see if they intersect with Suspect B, or if suspect B shows up in any photos or video.”

It does a lot more than that but you get the idea…

The interpretation of the law is up to the courts. The enforcement of it is up to the executive. The concept of the law is up to Congress. That’s how this is supposed to work.

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

#247

Post by bhawks »

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.

The actions of the government should always be publicly observable. This is what keeps it accountable. The fear that a person might be unfairly treated due to a long past indiscretion does not outweigh the public's right to observe and hold the government to account.

Alternatively consider that you are assuming the worst behavior of the public and the best behavior of the government if you support this and it should be obvious the dangerous position this creates.

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

#248

Post by squidbeak »

dash2 wrote: post #207
squidbeak wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government provided data to a private company. The private company sold resold access to a third party for AI ingestion. it's a plain case of tough titties to the private company. That said I don't know why the hell the service concerned isn't provided by the government itself.

Perhaps that is true, but the response linked by GP claims exactly the opposite: "We hired a specialist firm to build, in a secure sandbox, a safety tool for journalists. They are experts in building privacy-preserving AI solutions - for people like law firms or anyone deeply concerned with how data is held, processed, and protected. That’s why we chose them. Their founders are not only respected academics in additio…

It sounds very reasonable. But it's also directly contradicted by the government information about this case, which was very specific even about the number of breaches:

> Our understanding is that some 700 individual cases, at least, were shared with the AI company. We have sought to understand what more may have been shared and who else may have been put at risk, but the mere fact that the agreement was breached in that way is incredibly serious.

> ... the original agreement that was reached between Courtsdesk and the previous Government made it clear that there should not be further sharing of the data with additional parties. It is one thing to share the data with accredited journalists who are subject to their own codes and who are expected to adhere to reporting restrictions, but Courtsdesk breached that agreement by sharing the information with an AI company.

(from https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2026-02-10/debates/037...)

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

#249

Post by charcircuit »

reactordev wrote: post #72
whizzter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.” 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…

The AI should decide if it's still relevant or not. People should fully understand that their actions reflect their character and this should influence them to always do the right thing.

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

#250

Post by Muromec »

reactordev wrote: post #237
neallindsay wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rec…

Or in the case of, down the road, repeating an offense. The judge sees you had an issue in the past, was good for a while, then repeated, suggesting an event or something has happened or that the individual has lost their motivation to stay reformed. Sentencing to time for the crime but then also being able to assist the individual in finding help to get them back on track. We have the systems in place to do this, we…

>Also, when applying for a loan, being a sex offender shouldn’t matter. When applying for a mortgage across the street from an elementary school, it should.

I'm not sure we can write that much more COBOL.

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