December 18, 2014 at 11:31 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (12/18/2014)
ccd3000 (12/18/2014)
This law sounds asinine to me and seems skewed against the greater good of society. If you're misrepresented (libel, slander, or defamation) then you sue the individual in court, not conjure up some new global 'right' and all the economic and legal burdens that come along with it for the rest of society. I sympathize with the goal but pass a more targeted law. If another site publishes it then perhaps they should simply be liable for damages? That seems more sensible to me then trying to purge the world's databases of every reference I find objectionable or inaccurate with a push of a button. I shudder at that the thought of the expense, waste and ineffectiveness of it all.Impossible to manage this level of civil suits, especially with cost. If you were arrested, would you sue every publication that wrote about it? If the authorities got the name wrong and used yours, would you sue them and assume they would correct things?
It's easy to lean towards individual actions here, but the scale of this dwarfs the resources of most anyone.
Perhaps, but if there is money to be made chasing them down you probably won't have any problem signing a lawyer up to go after them and if there isn't money to be made pursuing them then nobody is probably reading it. I don't argue that litigation will solve the problem completely. I just think it's a more practical alternative. To me it's like the gun control issue. Unless you have absolute control (which is worse then the solution in my opinion) you don't have a complete solution. It's an imperfect solution for an imperfect world.
December 18, 2014 at 11:37 am
GoofyGuy (12/18/2014)
I certainly to worry about the growth of corporations, the centralization of power through data, as well as the problems that go with poor integrity or verification.Again, please carefully reread my previous post, in which I indicated the ever-growing piles of data have the grave potential to serve as tools of corporate and State control.
When the Nazis invaded the Low Countries, one of the first things they sought out were governmental and police files on individual citizens. You may be assured the Nazis didn't do this just to draw up Christmas card lists.
(The Dutch files, by the way, were meticulous and of great assistance to the invader's control of the populace. The Belgian files were messy and of no use at all. A lesson here, I should think.)
I think your comments are quite clear: you believe you are living on the cusp of a totalitarian revival of Europe's recent past. You assume it's wisdom though. Information, like any tool, can be used for ill or good. You lack the faith that it will be for the overall good and that, I believe, is certainly your right.
December 18, 2014 at 11:43 am
paul.kemner (12/18/2014)
I just want to claim copyright on all my life data. Then if someone's using it without paying the price I set, I'll go all "RIAA" and seize their servers for piracy.
Even copyright laws would allow someone to compile your life's data for the purpose a creating a derivative; a satire or parody perhaps.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 18, 2014 at 12:00 pm
ccd3000 (12/18/2014)
GoofyGuy (12/18/2014)
I certainly to worry about the growth of corporations, the centralization of power through data, as well as the problems that go with poor integrity or verification.Again, please carefully reread my previous post, in which I indicated the ever-growing piles of data have the grave potential to serve as tools of corporate and State control.
When the Nazis invaded the Low Countries, one of the first things they sought out were governmental and police files on individual citizens. You may be assured the Nazis didn't do this just to draw up Christmas card lists.
(The Dutch files, by the way, were meticulous and of great assistance to the invader's control of the populace. The Belgian files were messy and of no use at all. A lesson here, I should think.)
I think your comments are quite clear: you believe you are living on the cusp of a totalitarian revival of Europe's recent past. You assume it's wisdom though. Information, like any tool, can be used for ill or good. You lack the faith that it will be for the overall good and that, I believe, is certainly your right.
Being both European and a member of a certain ethnic group have a way of abridging one's faith in 'the overall good' intentions of governments and corporations.
December 18, 2014 at 12:41 pm
Steve, there is actually a good deal of data that does get deleted. Any company's retention policy also includes when the data gets deleted. It is highly desirable to do so, because nobody wants lawyers in some future lawsuit to bet hold of information that they are not legally entitled to. Sony would have had a bit less embarrassment if it had an email deletion policy in effect. We are advised to dispose of tax returns over seven years old, because that is the statute of limitations for the IRS. So it seems counter-intuitive that some external entity can keep all sorts of things around, and we have no control over it.
December 18, 2014 at 1:08 pm
As part of a data governance and stewardship role I have to consider who in my organisation should have access to personally identifiable information, in what context and for how long. It is not as easy as you'd think because I have to consider if two or more innocuous pieces of data combine to reveal rather more than intended.
A public search engine can be a major tool for a role requiring legitimate access to data. The problem is that its access is indiscriminate and there is no easy way to provide access to Jane Doe but not Joe Schmoe.
Just as an aside I can think of a few celebrities who should exercise their right to be forgotten ASAP.
December 18, 2014 at 1:09 pm
In the aftermath of the Enron probe, NSA leak, and Sony hack, I'd suggest executives take their controversial shop talk offline to a bar or the golf course. I know we live in an age where all communications and records can be digital, but there are strong and compelling reasons to keep it otherwise.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 18, 2014 at 1:23 pm
Assuming we did have the technical framework in place to make someone globally "forgotten", what's to prevent the bad guys from abusing the system? This reminds me of that 1995 movie "The Net", or that SciFi movie "The Forgotten".
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 19, 2014 at 9:31 am
I think that this all leads to a two tier Internet. This is like the early days of the web where AOL (I think) users had a simplified view of only a small subset of the web and for years were oblivious to the rest out there. As it is most people think that the only thing on the Internet is web pages and emails.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 19, 2014 at 9:40 am
Gary Varga (12/19/2014)
I think that this all leads to a two tier Internet. This is like the early days of the web where AOL (I think) users had a simplified view of only a small subset of the web and for years were oblivious to the rest out there. As it is most people think that the only thing on the Internet is web pages and emails.
I told someone the other day that I predict in the near future there will be multi-tiered internet from major providers. There will be one tier for "regular folks" that caps and throttles bandwidth and has filters to block access to black listed sites. In exchange for giving up privacy and unlimited downloading, the rates will be cheaper with more competition. It will have the blessing of the federal government. Of course regular folks will be paying for more cable TV, or rather more regular folks will be paying for cable TV, because that's the primary motivation.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 19, 2014 at 10:38 am
lptech (12/18/2014)
Steve, there is actually a good deal of data that does get deleted. Any company's retention policy also includes when the data gets deleted. It is highly desirable to do so, because nobody wants lawyers in some future lawsuit to bet hold of information that they are not legally entitled to. Sony would have had a bit less embarrassment if it had an email deletion policy in effect. We are advised to dispose of tax returns over seven years old, because that is the statute of limitations for the IRS. So it seems counter-intuitive that some external entity can keep all sorts of things around, and we have no control over it.
True, though I think most companies don't have a policy, and if I know how most companies work, it's not being done.
Is a good idea internally. Not sure how this works on the Internet.
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July 25, 2018 at 2:59 am
I've probably modified my views on this issue since I read Jon Ronson's 'So you've been publicly shamed?'
https://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been-Publicly-Shamed/dp/1594487138
I looks at the bizarre transgressions that have lead to people being vilified for various thing that really objectively might not be that big a deal. The outcomes are also surprisingly sexist. I didn't know there was a whole industry based around restoring online reputation until I read this. If you like to understand mob psychology etc it's a great read.
July 25, 2018 at 4:45 am
Individuals have a right to determine who knows what about them. The data collected on a person belongs, with rare exceptions, to the person -- not to an anonymous corporation or to the State.
Really?
Who said that?
Since when a private investigator has to ask permission to use information on a person he/she is spying on?
If I saw you breaking into a car or a house - does I mean you have a right to force me to forget about it?
Should a rogue builder have a right to be forgotten, when his building collapsed killing or injuring people in it?
Individuals never had a right to determine who knows what about them.
Information about individuals does not belong to them. And never did.
And this is right.
"Right to be forgotten" is deeply wrong, and consequences of this law would be horrendous, if there was a way to actually enforce it,
_____________
Code for TallyGenerator
July 25, 2018 at 5:45 am
Let's say that someone in their 30s was going for a public facing job and their prospective employer could look at a post from social media from 15 years ago that didn't capture them at their finest moment (not from personal experience, but it could have been). Should that one moment of madnes be allowed to colour their career? You sign up to a news media site with your email address as a user name, then spend the next few years deleting emailed adverts for medical treatments, camping equipment and kitchen supplies that you didn't sign up for but the media site sold these advertisers your data. Should you know who has your data? Should you be able to prevent them from getting your data in the first place without compromising your ability to use the site? (In my view, hell yeah!).
I work in the NHS and, in all honesty, the GDPR has been a massive pain in my arse for the past 6 months, but I can see its value.
The law in the EU and the UK is a big stick to deal with many clandestine arrangements. Should your internet past be allowed to dictate your future? Should consent be implied?
My main thought is that in an ideal world, everyone would be aware that data lasts forever, everyone would educate themselves about internet safety and password security and then laws like this would be unnecessary. It is not an ideal world, and it's difficult to look at it from a non-IT-Professional view. I think the law is justified in its own context. It offers protection to people, which is what laws should do.
July 25, 2018 at 6:49 am
Rather than attempting to scrub the internet's collective memory of embarrassing or allegedly false data (which isn't even technically possible), search providers should instead focus on context and ranking. The target audience should be knowledge seekers wanting a wholistic view of a topic; not muck-rakers wanting to narrow down a single verifiable fact for which to dismiss a candidate, a candidate for which the hiring manager probably never intended to hire in the first place for more mundane and personal reasons.
The way I see it, if an employer would dismiss a qualified candidate on the basis of an embarrassing social media post from years back, they might actually not be the best organization to work for in the first place. I've found that the methodology used for hiring speak volumes about the organization's culture. For example, an anal-retentive hiring process could suggest an anal-retentive future boss.
Good employers and good employees gravitate to each other eventually. We should all strive to be the best version of our self, never looking back, and we should seek out employers who are striving to be the best and looking forward too.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
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