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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

#361

Post by topherhunt »

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.

Jeez this seems totally backwards to me. I'd rather live in a society where court records are as open and public as safely possible (like GP's vision) and we as a society adjust our norms such that it's assholish and discriminatory to pass over someone for hiring just because they shoplifted when they were 15.

There will for sure be major backlash against "permanent criminal" datasets (bringing up AI in this is a red herring, it's not fundamentally different from if someone were serving such a database using CGI scripts; AI just gives us more reach to do the things we were already committed to doing). But I frankly don't sympathize with the attitude that people should have the right to pretend that past decisions never happened. You also shouldn't be permanently _punished_ or _ostracized_ for your past self's decisions. But nor should you have the right to expect total anonymity / clean slate disconnected from your past self's decisions.

My probably unpopular view: The right direction is for us as a society to recognize and acknowledge that people change and _need to be allowed to change_ -- not take the easy hack of erasing history. The cost for larger-scale public transparency & institutional change efforts is just too high.

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

#362

Post by hdlothia »

naasking wrote: post #357
dirasieb wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nobody gets to have unbounded information about others. It's weird that you think there should be no privacy constraints.

Why are you saying unbounded when the discussion is about court proceedings and convictions? There is a clear and consistent boundary here, no one is asking for search logs and round the clock surveillance.

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

#363

Post by gadders »

squidbeak wrote: post #248
dash2 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, that sounds like an MP that's been briefed by some Oxbridge classics grad who doesn't understand technology.

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

#364

Post by reactordev »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #359
reactordev wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are afraid to say pedophile or it gets caught in a chat filter. I’m not a fan of calling it PDF files but if that’s what it takes to have this discussion, so be it.

I understand that exists, and my point is that this is not one of those places. Preemptive universal compliance to private censorship rules is a bad thing. We should not normalize it. That's why I call it out when I see it. It serves no one to speak like you're inside the walled garden when you aren't. This kind of garbage leaking out because of corporate policies doesn't serve anyone, least of all victims of pedophi…

Until an AI scrapes your comments and doesn’t do a good job of putting conversations in context and weights you into a pedophile tag…

Each person is now responsible for their own censorship.

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

#365

Post by stodor89 »

londons_explore wrote: post #41
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.

"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.

> we should make it illegal to discriminate based on criminal conviction history

Uhh I don't know about that, being a criminal sounds like a pretty reasonable differentiator.

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

#366

Post by ahtihn »

newsclues wrote: post #300
ahtihn wrote: 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.

12 year olds selling crack aren't making a rational decision based on the lack of sufficient long term consequences.

So what exactly would worse long term consequences do besides ruin the life of kids making bad decisions?

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

#367

Post by hananova »

idopmstuff wrote: post #336
hananova wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many sane countries, companies can ask you to provide a legal certificate that you did not commit X category of crime. This certificate will then either say that you did not do any crimes in that category, or it will say that you did commit one or more of them. The exact crimes aren't mentioned. Coincidentally these same countries tend to have a much much lower recidivism rate than other countries.

This doesn't seem better? I'm an employer and I want to make sure you haven't committed any serious crimes, so I ask for a certificate saying you haven't committed violent crimes. I get a certificate saying you have. It was a fistfight from a couple of decades ago when you were 20, but I don't know if it's that or if you tortured someone to death. Gotta take a pass on hiring you, sorry. Seems like the people this ben…

At least where I live, a fistfight from decades ago wouldn’t be on the certificate. In your example you want to know about serious crimes, but ask for violent crimes, why are you surprised that the answer you get won’t be useful to make a decision?

As in many things judicial, it only works if the rest of the system is designed to make it work.

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

#368

Post by metaPushkin »

THE ONLY REASON IS THAT Courtsdesk PROVIDED TOO EFFECTIVE A TOOL FOR INVESTIGATING STATE CRIMES AND UNCOVERING CORRUPTION AMONG HIGH-RANKING OFFICIALS, LIKE Keir Starmer. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit..., Courtsdesk WAS ACTIVELY USED TO ANALYZE COURT CASES AND DETECT STATE CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE POLICE.
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