Live data from Hacker News

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

legalcheek.com

341–350 of 368 posts

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

#341
post #333
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why are only some sectors "vulnerable" and who is to make that call? How about the person cooking my food? You're over-thinking it, trying to solve for a problem that doesn't exist. No one has a "right" to work for me. There's plenty of roles that accept ex-cons and orgs that actively hire them.

> No one has a "right" to work for me.

True, but surely your rights to know everything about someone who would work for you also has limits.

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

#342
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then before I give you my business or hire you, I also want to know that you are the kind of person that thinks they have a right to any other person's entire life, so I can hold it against you and prevent you from benefitting from all your other possible virtues and afforts. So I likewise, require to know everything about you, including things that are none of my business but I just think they are my business and th…

You terms are acceptable. I'll put a sign out on my business that says "none of our employees have criminal records". Note you are free to advertise hiring prior offenders. You can also look up business ownership details and see if they have criminal records as well.

> I'll put a sign out on my business that says "none of our employees have criminal records".

Why only criminal records? There is a huge amount of potentially useful information about everyone that goes way beyond criminal records.

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

#343
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this a weird take. Are you saying you _want_ unaccountable and profit driven third party companies to become quasi-judicial arbiters of justice?

I am saying that it is not good if you had to hide information about yourself in order to get hired. Justice is provided by the courts.

An unsurprising position given today's world. I want to know who the Trump Supporters are so I can ensure they never work for me. Also, no electric car drivers, they are just not welcome here. Or meat eaters, god forbid! We won't need to worry about canceling you later, because you won't be associating with us to begin with.

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

#344

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…

[dead]

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

#345
post #333
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why are only some sectors "vulnerable" and who is to make that call? How about the person cooking my food? You're over-thinking it, trying to solve for a problem that doesn't exist. No one has a "right" to work for me. There's plenty of roles that accept ex-cons and orgs that actively hire them.

I don’t think everything you’re saying is completely out of line, but the way you’re drawing a line in the sand and being so unequivocal about this is kind of striking. You won’t even entertain a more nuanced to approach to this.

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

#346
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working as a underling for organized crime to commit robberies, drug deals, and violent crime Have you ever considered that these children are victims of organized crime? That they aren't capable of understanding the consequences of what they're doing and that they're being manipulated by adult criminals? The problem here isn't the lack of long term consequences for kids.

I used to be a drug dealer so I know what is going on and they aren’t victims, they are willing recruits. 12 year olds know it’s not right to sell crack. The problem is the gap between lack of legal opportunities for youth and the allure of easy money, status and power from being a criminal. Doesn’t help that the media makes it look so fun and cool to be a gangster.

[dead]

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

#347
Is never good when governments make access to information more difficult.

If the information is already accessibly to the public, even if what they claim about selling it to an AI company is true, the AI companies already has access to it if they want.

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

#348
There's so much nonsense going on in the UK lately that it seems worthwhile to start hosting public interest information like this off-shore, in the US.

A non-commercial initiative hosted by a group of Americans who wish to promote the cause of free information, but are themselves not interested in travelling to the UK, would be relatively immune to overreach by the British state. A US based service could take benefit of the First Amendment, the SPEECH Act, the fair use provision in US copyright law, etc - and simply ignore all the numerous British 'suppression orders', 'cessation notices', 'online safety' laws, etc.

If the Internet is indeed balkanizing - as sadly appears to be the case - let's squeeze some silver linings out of it.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pdf files Please don't unnecessarily censor yourself for the benefit of large social media companies. We can say pedophile here. We should be able to say pedophile anywhere. Pre-compliance to censorship is far worse than speaking plainly about these things, especially if you are using a homophone to mean the same thing.

I actually find this amusing and do it because I like to. We are witnessing the new tabooed word, where the usual sacrilege doesn't hit the nerve anymore.

But pedophile isn’t really taboo as a word, there is nothing sacrilegious about typing or saying it. PDF file is pronounced the same and means the same thing. The alternate version is just a rumored way to avoid being down ranked by a corporate algorithm.

Maybe I misunderstand your meaning.

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

#350

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 crime having happened is forever. No-one is entitled to have it forcibly forgotten. That's up to other people to decide.
Post reply on HN