UK Privacy Watchdog: 'Right To Be Forgotten' On the Web Unworkable 134
An anonymous reader writes "Want to be invisible to Google? Apparently you can't, at least according to the European Commission and Information Commissioner's Office. '"The right to be forgotten worries us as it makes people expect too much," said [deputy commissioner David Smith]. Instead, Smith said the focus should be on the "right to object" to how personal data is used, as this places the onus on businesses to justify the collection and processing of citizens' data. "It is a reversal of the burden of proof system used in the existing process. It will strengthen the person's position but it won't stop people processing their data." EC data protection supervisor Peter Hustinx added the right to be forgotten is currently unworkable as most countries are divided on what qualifies as sensitive personal data. "I believe the right to be forgotten is an overstatement," said Hustinx."
Right to alternicks (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more worried about the crackdown on using alternate identities online. My friends know who I am, but no one else should be able to pull up dirt on me based on random dirt they find associated with my name.
At the same time, if there's an actual crime being investigated, it's takes some pretty trivial sleuthing to trace back an alternate id to a person, but takes some effort just out of reach for a telemarketer or employer or griefer, and could require an approval process and leave a paper trail back to the requester.
So I'm sort of upset that GooTube / Facebook push for realname ids. But for the most part they let you get away with using your alternicks... for now. But that's the right we need to fight to preserve.
unworkable? care to elaborate, corporate world? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see here. We have the EU defining a legal civil right. The corporate world says "oh noez! We can't do that! Our business model is BASED around violating that civil right! We totally can't just delete all that precious and lucrative data just because some prudes don't want to be included!"
If we adapt this, and replace some other legally recognized civil right, like say-- the right to the sanctity of one's own body, the absurdity of this attestment becomes painfully clear.
"Oh noez! We can't do that, our business model is BASED on forcing prepubescent children to perform sexual services without getting any permission of compensation! We can't just let those very lucrative child prostitutes go just because some prudes don't want to take diseased cock all day! We make our money selling child prostitution services! These so called "rights" are completely unworkable! How can we sell reliable prostitution services if we can't force people to be whores for us!?"
Seriously. That's what I see when I see these kinds of arguments. If your business mode revolves round violating other people's rights, then you DON'T have any right to perform that line of business. The fact that it is "unworkable" is fucking INTENTIONAL.
Re:How hard could it freaking be (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree fully <insert your real screen name here>, but have you considered the fact that even if your regex wiped out your post above (assuming you posted it with a real name), that your regex should not modify my reply which very well may contain not just your post... but additional information? Why should your right to be forgotten override my right to speak?
Re:The world is really small now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bu that information is irrelevant with time and newer pop culture examples.
If either of those people sat in front of you for an interview would you recognize them?
Also, people are finely starting to realize that everyone is an ass from time to time so it doesn't really matter.
Re:unworkable? care to elaborate, corporate world? (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear American companies, fuck off elsewhere if you can't honour the laws of the land where you conduct business. Simple really.
No such right (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not have a right to be forgotten. Think about what that means. That means you do something and I witness it. Do you have a right to compel me to forget it ever happened? Of course not. My right to be secure in my thoughts, the written expression thereof (which is what they really mean by forget), and my effects is a real right. Your desire for me to forget something you did is not.
You have a right to privacy. Exercise it by not publishing information you want kept private. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, and short of fraud or some other malfeasance being responsible for the breach of privacy in the first place, you have no right to command that anyone try.
Re:unworkable? care to elaborate, corporate world? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, just like it is illegal for me to set up a camera in your bathroom and then sell the pictures of you in the shower.
That is basically what the internet is right now, a big public bath house where people can see all the naughty bits.
There is money to be made by taking pictures and selling them. (That's basically what collecting personal information without permission and selling it as a bulk aggregate is. "Anonymizing" the picture by not affixing a name, and shuffling it in with hundreds of others doesn't stop you from taking the picture and selling it. Making the photography illegal, and enforcing it, makes people who peddle such wares either criminal, or highly regulated and on the up and up. Much like the legitimate porn industry, vs 3rd world sex slave racketeers.)
The comparison isn't hard. Getting people to feel violated by being the equivalent of an ameture porn star for taking a shower, but because their data was exposed and whored out IS hard.
These weasly tactics, like saying "it gives people a false impression [of safety]" are just horseshit. Just apply the same rhetoric toward rape, and see the absurdity.
Its like saing "if you don't want to get raped, don't walk on the sidewalk at night."
Re:Your real right (Score:5, Insightful)
In all of those cases a skilled hacker, an unethical employee, or a corrupt goverment agent can get an unsettling amount of information about you. Avoiding it is difficult but plausible for educated, upper middle class or wealthier people - don't use a membership service for your pharmacy and grocery store. Don't have credit cards. Pay cash for your shopping. Use multiple banks, and do most of your transactions using prepaid credit cards and money orders. Switch phone numbers and wireless carriers frequently, or forego a mobile phone entirely. Set up all of your internet devices to use TOR or a VPN service. Host your own email, and only communicate using encrypted messages with other people that likewise host their own email and communicate only via encrypted messages. Avoid all social networks. All of that is a lot of work, and not practical for most of the population - it's so uncommon I wouldn't be surprised if you end up on a government watch list simply for conspicuously protecting your own privacy.
That said, legislating the problem away is simply unworkable. I don't know what the practical broad solution for privacy is, but simply passing a law demanding that Google, Facebook, Comcast, T-Mobile, Costco, Mastercard, etc... abandon large aspects of their business model is a nice fantasy but it won't fly.
Re:The world is really small now. (Score:4, Insightful)
And that makes permanent data storage better? So that we don't eventually extort each other into oblivion? It's better to mandate public opt-in data life.
Everyone is human. Do we need the evidence to drag out decades from now about your indiscretion in Gresham?
Re:unworkable? care to elaborate, corporate world? (Score:5, Insightful)
The civil right here, is the right to be forgotten online, meaning, the right to have your previous history expunged, and also the right to not have data collected without permission.
It's no different from whipping out a camera, photographing people who didn't sign a model release, and then lucratizing the photos in ways the people photoed don't endorse, just because they happened to be outside, or were wearing a certain brand of clothing.
Just so you know, the above is fucking illegal as hell, and people DO have legal right to demand the destruction of such imagery. (As far as I know, in bot the EU and the US.)
This is simply an expansion of the same basic premise, that you have a right to privacy, a right to not be exploited against your wishes, etc.
Proper enfocement would be to fine the fuck out of companies that refuse to comply, and persist in warehousing data.
Re:The world is really small now. (Score:4, Insightful)
everything should be opt-in as far as your data is concerned.
The big question is: why isn't it?
forget MS, google. Forget every analytics company. This should be across the board, and they should not be able to refuse you access if you don't opt in.
I'm risking beeing modded as a troll for this... (Score:2, Insightful)
But seriously... it can't be overstated.
Ideally... don't do stupid shit that you are going to regret later in the first place
But failing that, because hey.... we all do things that thought might have been a good idea at the time, and only realized in hindsight that it wasn't particularly as good as one had originally thought, then at least be mature enough to face the consequences of your choices... and that means even if those consequences follow you for the rest of your life. Expecting societty or other people to forget or forgive your past might very well be a nice theoretical ideal, but the truth of the matter is that we live in a far from ideal world. It's not that I particularly condone an unforgiving society, but in the end, only *YOU* can be accountable for what you may have done in your past... including stuff that might not put you in the best light It's not anyone's problem to forget but your own.
The question is not so much what are you going to do to make people forget about the stupid things you might have done in the past as much as it is what are you going to do with the rest of your life in spite of it?
Because really, if you can't do that, and learn how to move past it, then how in the hell do you expect anyone else to?
Re:unworkable? care to elaborate, corporate world? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is it impossible, other than it happens to be a conflict of interest for you?
Much like people provide records to medical institutions because it is necessary to get quality healthcare, people provide online merchants their address, telephone, and credit card numbers to make purchases and get deliveries. Nowhere in the tranaction is there even so much as a checkbox that says "yes, remember this purchase so you can suggest simular items, and share this purchase experience with other merchants." Instead, the push is to consider this "just a given! Our customers WANT this! Nevermind the sounds of the angry mob outside, that's just your imagination."
Technologically I don't see how this is hard either. Keeping the data for law enforcement subpoenas for a limited time, and pretending it doesn't exist is a far cry from embedding spybugs in your fucking checkout page so that the "user experience" extends to other site visits as well.
The latter is like putting a GPS tracking bug on the pricetags at a shopping center, so you know where else the customer shops that day.
Yet, that is EXACTLY what ad network tracing cookies do, EXACTLY what that bullshit "facebook button" does, etc.
I don't want that, I don't want the service, I don't want your ads, I don't want to be profiled, just because I casually look at a news link, etc.
I am not alone, and the EU seems to agree that you shouldn't presume I have agreed by default.
That this makes your life harder as a dev is just tough shit.