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US Activists Oppose US Govt Calls To Weaken EU Privacy Rules
judgecorp writes "The European Commission has proposals for data privacy (including the 'right to be forgotten') and the U.S. government is opposing them. Now U.S. activists have arrived in Brussels to lobby against their government's opposition to the European measures. The move comes following reports of 'extreme' lobbying by U.S. authorities against the European proposals."
Although the "right to be forgotten" raises some free speech issues, it doesn't seem like a bad idea in principle.
Extreme lobbying, such as employed in Iraq, etc., etc?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
...the "right to be forgotten" raises some free speech issues...
is one way to look at it, but the other way to look at it is that free speech raises some privacy issues. As the Stanford Law Review article recognises, there's a tension between the two and different cultures choose to give them different weights. That doesn't make either culture right or wrong.
Our personal data is worth money to others. They don't want their money taken from them.
"But the right to delete data becomes far more controversial when it involves Fleischerâ(TM)s second category: âoeIf I post something, and someone else copies it and re-posts it on their own site, do I have the right to delete it?â Imagine a teenager regrets posting a picture of herself with a bottle of beer on her own site and after deleting it, later discovers that several of her friends have copied and reposted the picture on their own sites. If she asks them to take down the pictures, and her friends refuse or cannot be found, should Facebook be forced to delete the picture from her friendsâ(TM) albums without the ownersâ(TM) consent based solely on the teenagerâ(TM)s objection?"
If Universal posts the latest Spiderman movie and I re-post it, they can have it taken down. This is just normal copyright and that's not limited to big companies or rich people.
] Finally, there is Fleischerâ(TM)s third category of takedown requests: âoeIf someone else posts something about me, do I have a right to delete it?â This, of course, raises the most serious concerns about free expression. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that states cannot pass laws restricting the media from disseminating truthful but embarrassing informationâ"such as the name of a rape victimâ"as long as the information was legally acquired.
The proposed European regulation, however, treats takedown requests for truthful information posted by others identically to takedown requests for photos Iâ(TM)ve posted myself that have then been copied by others: both are included in the definition of personal data as âoeany information relatingâ to me, regardless of its source. I can demand takedown and the burden, once again, is on the third party to prove that it falls within the exception for journalistic, artistic, or literary exception.
This one sucks and shouldn't be there. Obviously people should be able to talk about others even if it's not journalism or art.
Generally, I think the questions on what's ok and what's not have been solved in law long before the Internet existed. This is just about spelling out how hosters should deal with takedown notices etc.
Wait... so today it's OK for people to be in control of what happens to their data?
But step back a few stories and when it's a song or movie, it's no longer up to the person who created it whether it ends up copied all around the world for free, and they have no right to stop other people from copying it?
I think the point of this discussion is that European Commission gets to decide on laws in Europe. And U.S. should pretty much stay out of it. This is completely irrespective of what actual rules are being considered.
This is a little different because the EU is not [yet] a major wrongdoer with respect to privacy. The protest is more to bolster their nerve against heavy pressure from the US govt (a ne'er-do-well).
It enables the EU commissioners to say "The US is divided on this issue of privacy, with the govt saying one thing yet important people and organisations dissent)." So they get to do what they want anyways.
The fear the US may have is that at some point down the road the EU may try to go after US companies to force them to obey its rules. It's one thing to say "Facebook.de must delete every evidence of a user's existence upon their request", but what happens if the EU is trying to say "Facebook.com must delete every evidence of a user's existence upon their request."
Beyond that, there are some limits to how far you could ever apply this "forget me" notion. I'm sitting in North America, running a listserv that has people from the US, Canada, Europe, a couple of Asian countries and Australia on it. The listserv has an archive dating back to about 2002 and there are copies of that archive all over the bloody place. If I suddenly were faced with requests from my European users to start deleting every post they made, it would be an arduous and ultimate futile process. We'd be talking about deleting not only their posts, but posts that contain excerpts from their posts. Worst of all, it would ruin the continuity of the archive, which may be of significant value (I've found myself going back several years to hunt down information).
Obviously this law is targeted at Google, Facebook, Twitter et al. But what it ultimately comes to encompass is ludicrous, and I sure hope that the US, where my stuff is based, does not go down such an extremist road.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Since these companies are based in Ireland for tax purposes, that might indeed end up happening...
On the other hand, that could also force said companies' tax dollars back into the US which wouldn't hurt at this point...
Nothing is enough for whom enough is too little - Confucius
As proposed, Slashdot (a US company) could be forced to delete posts made by US citizens, if those posts mention someone in the EU. That's a legitimate concern. Had this law been in place before, Mussoluni's "right to be forgotten" would mean he could order Facebook to delete any posts critical of him.
It might even be enough to prompt a major "recall" of US companies, in which case it might become interesting. On top of that, bringing HQs back would also help employment as well.
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Nothing is enough for whom enough is too little - Confucius
I've seen more good rulings come out of EU than the US. With no in-depth information on a subject, I would more trust the EU with my person (/personal information) than the US (Government/US companies)...
I really wish we would adopt the European standards on privacy. This is one area where I freely admit the Euro's are doing things right and we are blatantly being ass backwards about things.
Another practical example of how undemocratic the EU became: no need to lobby elected Members of European Parliament, just lobby the unelected European Commission. I got the feeling that a single US lobbyist weight more on UE politics than any number of EU citizens.
I'm completely on the pro "data privacy" side of this debate, and I agree that the official US stance tends to be bullying. But it seems to me that the "US government has no business lobbying European government" argument leaves something important out. A government has a responsibility to its citizens to enforce or at least encourage fair trade practices. If Britons, for example, decide they want high protective tariffs, then certainly that is their right. But then US trade policy may need to be adjusted accordingly. To avoid a trade war, both nations need to understand how the other perceives and is likely to react to changes. Suppose the US delegation says, "if you implement policy X, that will dramatically increase the cost of American products in your country, in which case we're likely not going to be able to continue giving your products preferred treatment in the US." Is that a threat? If so its a completely reasonable one. And in cases when one nation exports a product that the second nation doesn't for the most part export, the first nation needs to represent the interests of the industries that are important to it.
The US government is more at the call of big money than it should be. And it needs to be more respectful of other nation's integrity and choices, and more concerned with fairness, with less of a 'might makes right' approach. But it still needs to communicate on behalf of US economic interests, since protecting those interests is one of the first responsibilities of government.
How would Slashdot be forced? Why would a European law have jurisdiction in the U.S.? I suppose the EU could begin blocking sites that don't comply. Some sort of Great Firewall of Europe I suppose.
The right to be forgotten sounds appealing, it really does. When I first heard about it it sounded like something I liked. However the more I thought about it the more I thought about the **AA's playing whackamole and the logistical nightmares of actually trying to implement such a thing. The next problem is how do you separate it from censorship? It's also next to impossible to cleanly state when and where it should be granted.
Can you demand the right to be forgotten by corporate databases? Facebook sounds easy enough, but what about credit agencies, employers and news agencies? In practice I think it would be next to impossible to implement, as the **AA's have found out time and again - the Internet never forgets.
You also have cases of legitimate needs. I had a bad renter that stayed with me last year. Should he be able to demand the right to be forgotten so that he can get out of a bad referral? How about employers that have bad employees? I worked with a guy that was fired for hosting kiddie porn from a server at work. This guy still tries to get work in the field, should he be able to demand the right to be forgotten by his employer of 20 some years so that he can put down his experience without anyone being able to conduct a background check?
What about news agencies that reported on people that were in the news? Richard Jewell was wrongly described as the bomber for Atlantic City Olympic bombing by many news agencies who did a half ass job of news coverage. Does he have a legitimate right to be forgotten? His life was ruined without cause (he was innocent) and surely he would have cause to be forgotten if anyone would. Or does the fact that he was internationally famous as the person to discover a bomb at the Olympics and then be wrongly blamed for it's placement trump his personal case?
What about the arguments against censorship of people. Hypothetical Bob has his account on Facebook and wants everything about him removed from Facebook. Susan remembers Bob before he went crazy and wants to keep his picture up from their wedding. Does Bob's desire to remove himself from Facebook trump Susan's right to remember her husband as he was before he took the crazy train out of town?
What about government records, are those something that you can demand be forgotten? Many police agencies now host open records of who has been arrested and post this information on their website. If someone is arrested do they have a right to have that information forgotten?
Even if you had a clear legal structure that could say when and where someone had the right to be forgotten, without crossing over into censorship, how on earth are you going to do it? I would lay the last dollar I had that you probably couldn't name 10% of the companies that had information on you if your in a typical first world country.
As I recall, when he was no longer in power he was also dead. I think this limits the possibility of requesting information to be deleted somewhat.
In this case, you have to balance the right of the public to know with the right of the person to stay private. Hitler would be considered a "person of public interest", and thus the right for the public to know would prevail. It's basicly the same with current journalism. You can't put an article in a journal about your neighbour with full name and address, and detailling every step he takes, free speech issues be damned. And EU data privacy laws just do the same for data. There are other rights that are present in the offline world for a long time (right to the own picture, covering for instance pictures others take of you), and the "right to be forgotten" is just an online version of the same rights.
They are asking the facebook company. If the facebook company has a commercial presence in EU , then they better obey the law and court order. Again, as all in those discussion you have to separate the web site, to the company. The court order are going to the company where it has presence. It does not matter afterward if the web page is chaos.ru or texas.us, the company has to obey the court order because of its commercial rpesenc in EU. naturally if facebook is ready to abandon completely the EU market that's another story.
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As proposed, Slashdot (a US company) could be forced to delete posts made by US citizens, if those posts mention someone in the EU.
NO. That is absolutely NOT what the right to be forgotten is about.
The right will give an individual to have THEIR data removed from sites. Data that they themselves uploaded, such as posts they made or photos they shared. If you see one of those photos and decide to write a blog post about it then your blog is perfectly safe and won't be covered by this right.
The right to be forgotten is not about purging information about yourself from the internet, it is about having companies delete your data when asked to. That means if you delete your Facebook profile it really is deleted, and Facebook can't carry on displaying your photos to other people or displaying your name in search results or store information about you any more. If other people post on their wall mentioning your name there is nothing you can do about it, beyond the usual legal protections against libel etc.
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