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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

#301

Post by Muromec »

mikkupikku wrote: post #275
Muromec wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also possible to apply a higher standard to the government employees and force greater transparency on them, up to treating them as de-facto slaves of the society.

Yeah okay, different standard just for government employees... So consider the same scenario above except instead of a cop its the son of a politician or the nephew of a billionaire. Not government employees. Are you comfortable with the government running secret trials for them too? Are you confident that the system can provide fair and impartial judgments for such people when nobody is allowed to check their work?

Do you see a lot of billionaries and their nephews in the public trials right now? The one which definitely didn't kill the insurance ceo is going pretty good, judging from all the paid shilling on *grams and such.

Now for a serious answer, what happens in practice in Europe is not secret trials, because trials are very much public. Since there is only so many billionaries, their nephews, actual mafiosi and people with political exposure prosecution, the journalists would monitor them closely, but will not be there on a hearing about your co-workers (alleged) wife-beating activities.

It's all reported, surname redacted (or not, it depends), but we all know who this is about anyways. "Court records says that a head of department at a government institution REDACTED1 was detained Monday, according to the public information, the arrests happened at the Fiscal service and the position of the department head is occupied by Evhen Sraka".

What matters when this is happens is not the exact PII of the person anyways. I don't care which exact nephew of which billionarie managed to bribe the cops in the end, but the fact that it happened or not.

Rank and file cops aren't that interesting by the way, unless it's a systemic issue, because the violence threshold is tuned down anyway -- nobody does a routine traffic stop geared for occupational army activities.

Like everything, privacy is not an absolute right and is balanced against all other rights and what you describe fits the definition of a legitimate public interest, which reduces the privacy of certain people (due to their position) by default and can be applied ad-hoc as well.

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

#302

Post by andsoitis »

neallindsay wrote: post #195
andsoitis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 rec…

> If someone else later finds an account of them being accused, they need a way to credibly assert that they were found innocent.

At the heart of Western criminal law is the principle: You are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Western systems do not formally declare someone "innocent".

A trial can result in two outcomes: Guilty or Not Guilty (acquittal). Note that the latter does not mean the person was proven innocent.

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

#303

Post by bell-cot »

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.

Before you even get to the "AI dataset ... forever-conviction" or copyright issues, you need to address AI's propensity to hallucinate when fed legal data and questions.

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

#304

Post by dirasieb »

criddell wrote: post #290
dirasieb wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>openly admits his beliefs results in parents not making good decisions on who to allow near their children, keeps going anyway great moral system you have there

That's a bad faith take. In one comment you managed to violate a whole bunch of the HN commenting guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

how else would you interpret admitting you don't think parents should have a right to know the backgrounds of the people with access to their children before making informed decisions on whether or not to allow it?

please, show me your good faith interpretation and i will take back my comment

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

#305

Post by anonymous908213 »

dirasieb wrote: post #270
anonymous908213 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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…

Absolutely fucking crazy that you call accurately describing the reality of AI scraping "absolutely fucking crazy" while at the same time going "who cares?" on attacks against journalism and free speech. >Oh no, some musician died, PASS THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT, LOCK DOWN ALL INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINALS, JAIL JOURNALISTS!!!!

> on attacks against journalism and free speech.

"Free speech" is some kind of terminal brain worm that begs itself to be invoked to browbeat most anybody into submission, I suppose. Now we're apparently extending "free speech" to mean "the government must publish sensitive private information about every citizen in an easily-scraped manner". Well, I don't buy your cheap rhetorical trick. I support freedom of speech in exactly the scope it was originally intended, that is, the freedom to express ideas without facing government censorship or retaliation. Trying to associate your completely unrelated argument with something that everybody is expected to agree with by default is weak.

Nor is it "an attack on journalism". If a real journalist still exists in the current year, they can do investigative work to obtain information that is relevant to the public's interests and then publish it freely. Nobody is stopping them.

> LOCK DOWN ALL INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINALS

Notably, people who aren't criminals may find themselves in court to determine whether or not they aren't. Unfortunately, people like yourself and the entirety of the broadcast and print media then go on to presume every person who goes to court are criminals and do everything in their power to ruin their lives. Far from just "some musician", most people who are arrested on serious charges get a black mark on their record that effectively destroys their careers and denies them the ability to rent property outside of a ghetto, as employers and landlords discriminate against them baselessly even after they are acquitted of all charges against them.

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

#306

Post by dirasieb »

dirasieb wrote: post #254
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.

right, for example someone convicted of killing their parents should fit right into an elderly care home staff team and convicted child rapists should not be barred from working in an elementary school, protecting honest and innocent people from criminals is basically the same thing as racism!

it's hilarious that "people" downvote comments pointing out the logical conclusion of the policies they defend

wouldn't making it illegal to discriminate based on criminal records prevent an elementary school of refusing to employ a candidate that is "fit for the job" (graduated from a good university, has years of experience in the field, etc) who just happens to have a child rape conviction on the basis that he has a child rape conviction? doesn't 1 + 1 equal 2?

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

#307

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

madeofpalk wrote: post #296
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good use case for a blockchain. AI companies can run their own nodes so they're not bashing infra that they don't pay for. Concerned citizens can run their own nodes so they know that the government isn't involved in any 1984-type shenanigans. In the sealed-for-X-years case, the government can publish a hash of the blocks that they intend to publish in X years so that when the time comes, people can prove t…

I like the part where you created a system where if someone has enough resources they can just alter the judicial record.

It seems like you're assuming we'd use proof-of-work. That would be crazy.

The consensus mechanism would be: block is good if it has a judge's signature (or some other combination of signatures from other elected officials, depending on how the laws work where you are).

Or are you proposing that somebody out there is prepared to subvert the signatures by computing a hash collision or some other herculean task?

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

#308

Post by jasonlotito »

bko wrote: post #155
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…

> 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.

What criminal records do you have? Please provide a way to verify. Until then, you cannot be trusted in any capacity.

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

#309

Post by AngryData »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #268
reactordev wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Should it though? You can buy a piece of real estate without living there, e.g. because it's a rental property, or maybe the school is announced to be shutting down even though it hasn't yet. And in general this should have nothing to do with the bank; why shoul…

Yeah I agree, a corporation should not only not care, they should be actively prevented from being allowed to make discriminations base on anything outside of whether they can pay or not. If they sense a potential other problem, at worst it should be reported to police or some other governmental authority, it simply isn't their business otherwise.

To me any other viewpoint inevitably leads to abuse of one group or class or subset of society or another. If they are legally allowed to discriminate in some ways, they will seek to discriminate in others, both in trying to influence law changes to their benefit and in skirting the law when it is convenient and profitable.

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

#310

Post by AngryData »

BurningFrog wrote: post #292
wredcoll wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People should fully understand that their actions reflect their character As if "character" was some kind of immutable attribute you are born with.

It mostly is. People really do have personalities.

Except it will inevitably lead to discrimination and abuse as it always has in the past. How much of the US justice system is based on harassing poor communities using that kind of excuse? Even if one community is actually less likely to commit crimes than another, if you send 90% of your policing forces there, using the excuse they it is just the way they are and things don't change much, you will find 90% of your crimes there. Even if twice as many unresolved crimes are happening in the the other area.
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