'Right to be forgotten' could threaten global free speech, say NGOs
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Curious if HN has any ideas how to approach that issue?
Why should that information be protected in the first place? It's not much different than a phone book. Your full name, address, phone number, etc are all linked to your identity. Once someone has one, it becomes nearly impossible to stop them from getting the others.
The problem with doxxing is that it usually comes with a threat of violence from ideological opponents. I think what many people should be fighting for is the right to anonymity. For your identity to never be revealed in the first place. Free speech can't truly be expressed if having the "wrong" opinion leads to some wingnut smashing your head with a bike lock.
Maybe a right to anonymity with the efficiency losses you get there is worth it? Tough issue.
And why should a celebrities and public officials have different standards? Either it's fair to judge someone by a certain past action or it isn't.
And yes, the issue isn't that it's new, it (like many internet social issues) is scale. A few bad actors locally to now thousands world-wide.
China is already getting pretty busy at exerting its influence on foreign entities to do things like that. Things that relate to its perceived national interest and identity, censorship, etc. Such as the demands placed on airlines as it relates to Taiwan (which isn't a Chinese territory and is a free nation).
You won't see any Winnie the Pooh baby blimps floating over London on Xi's next visit. Iran isn't going to refuse to sell oil to China over Xinjiang. Germany isn't going to refuse a natural gas pipeline with Putin's Russia. All countries, and most corporations, compromise their supposed morals on a routine basis when it suits them. Nike, they of vast sweatshop labor, feel free to simultaneously run ads promoting moral enlightenment.
Various companies that built fortunes on easily collectible data, argue against the law with the "limiting free speech" line because they don't want to spend money on the data cleanup side.
The rest is propaganda.
The actually law was put in place by representatives of the voting majority of EU.
Edit: rewrite after understanding your point better.
> "Basically, Apple added some code to iOS with the goal that phones in China wouldn't display a Taiwanese flag," Wardle says, "and there was a bug in that code."
However, I don't believe it is fair to compare state censorship with an individual whose online reputation could prevent them from eating or having a roof over their head.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-china-censorship-bug-iphon...
The critical terms "inadequate", "irrelevant" are dangerously subjective. What's irrelevant to one person may be of great interest to another.
"Unrestricted" freedom of speech favours just one side.
So, unless one side is deaf... or, in this case, fingers are broken...
So, one must speak!
A U.S. judge can claim all they want that Google doesn't need to comply, but it still leaves Google violating the Canadian court's orders. It's entirely within Canada's purview to begin fining Google and potentially seizing and shutting down their assets in Canada until they comply with the law.
The ideal that a Northern California court has some sort of authority over the matter is literally laughable.
The U.S. does the same, and expects the same. In the scenario of this case, Canada is demanding that Google remove infringement of a Canadian citizen's copyright from Google's server. Similarly, the U.S. is well-known for aggressively pursuing entities in other country's for violating U.S. copyright protections.
Google is not the good guy here, they're trying to protect their ability to distribute pirated content. And they have no legal basis for their refusal to comply.
Note that Canada has not stated that data on a US server must be censored "when a Canadian connects to it". Canada has stated that Google must remove the data from all of their servers, regardless of where it is accessed. Aka, it is not okay to pirate a Canadian citizen's content even when it's on a US server and being accessed by a US citizen.
If the US wants its companies to comply with the standards of Canada, thats a topic for legislation... not something that ought to given by default.
The current laws do not fix the problem - but it is hard to see which ones will
Every piece of the Internet, every server, computer, router, and switch, is in one country or another (barring the few floating out in international waters), and every single one of them is subject to the law in the country where it is. And every individual or business entity operating them is subject to the laws in the countries they are or operate in. This has always been this way.
The Internet is not any different than any other communication medium. We don't perceive a phone call as being something above or outside the law of the nation it takes place in. We don't see mail as being above or outside the law of the nations it traverses. The Internet is just another medium of communication between people and businesses like any other.
Does country A have any right to dictate what company B does in country C, just because company B operates in country A? Many of us say no, because that will only cause a downward spiral to make the internet the lowest common denominator of all countries that are connected.
Also note that country A absolutely can decide what terms upon which company B is allowed to operate in country A. This is true even of them stating what company B can and can't do in country C. If company B wants to do something in country C that company A prohibits, company B needs to decide whether it wants to operate in country A and follow country A's laws, or leave country A so it can do what it wants in country C.
The Internet is by design, and should be, decentralized. The "lowest common denominator" effect is an unfortunate side effect of centralized entities like Google trying to cater to everyone. But Google is the problem, exempting them from the law is hardly the solution. Smaller, localized providers will be able to better meet the needs of a given population's culture and laws, and address the unique problems associated with any given locality.
Yes, that does mean that the Internet won't look the same to everyone everywhere in the world, but that isn't a bad thing. Facebook in Myanmar is a great example that just because a website can be available globally doesn't mean it should. These global entities are not capable of understanding the impact they have on a macro or micro scale on that scope.
The US is perfectly willing to enforce its own rulings on foreign companies operating solely abroad, at the point at which those companies' goods/services enter the US.
So why wouldn't we just assume that every country is going to do the same; and so pre-emptively self-regulate if we want to do business in foreign markets with differing laws?
Canada has every right to say that it will block Google from Canadians accessing it unless/until they censor those pages, not just for Canadians, but for everybody. Given that, and given that Google knows that they could do that, what options are Google left with (assuming they care about remaining available to Canadians)?
https://m.dw.com/en/eu-to-reactivate-blocking-statute-agains...
While those who are fans of international corporations (for some reason), seem to think that these global megacorps should be above the law, having to answer to no country's authority, the reality is, a global corporation is beholden to follow the law of every country it operates in. And hence, if Canada tells Google to do something internationally, Google can either choose to comply, or not do business in Canada.
You can see a similar effect in how the US imposes bans on operating in some countries. If a company wants to do business in the US, it has to obey the US's bans on doing business with North Korea or Iran or what have you. Since so much global business includes US products or needs the US market, our bans have to be followed by more than just folks who live here in the US. If you recall the whole issue with ZTE being effectively shut down over a US ban because they dealt with Iran, you can see how a US law can shut down a Chinese company for doing business with a completely different country.
A country can define the conditions for doing business there as whatever it wants, and can impose any level of punishment that it can manage to enforce on a company that doesn't comply. That's sovereignty, and all countries have it.
Of course this is government, they can do whatever the hell they want. If they want to tell Google they have to delete it globally or they'll be blocked, there's not much anyone else can do about it. Though Google is probably close enough to universal to call their bluff. I know I'd be pissed and writing to my congressman.
That said, the Canadian government can only 'kill' Google in Canada. Since Google wants those Canadian dollars, they will comply.
This is a serious danger with multinational companies. More and more sovereign nations will force these corporations to comply with demands that conflict with the desires of peoples in other nations.
Would Google give the information on select US users that have visited China to the Chinese government?
Would Google give the information on select US users that have visited China to the Chinese government if it meant getting kicked out of a $50 billion market?
When business interests dictate that money comes first, and ideals like freedom come later, money always wins.
To my understanding, the essential value of free speech is that it protects the unpopular voices... but because of how the system works, the ones without power have substantially more difficulty having their ideas heard. Unilateral free speech makes it impossible for anything except the popular opinions to be voiced without being drowned out.
I can't think of a solution to this, unfortunately.
This isn't about libel: it's about criminals and wrongdoers wanting the Internet to be wiped clean of evidence of their crimes or wrongdoing.
If you have a legitimate reason to find out a criminal past you can request a criminal background check.
And that's not even including all the other legitimate reasons, like any one who did something stupid as a teenager, has a vicious stalker, did something embarrassing once, has changed their views, has changed themselves, etc.
People change. Computers can't comprehend that.
Both notions are related, but clearly not the same.
We understand that civil rights aren't a binary category, and that different people and different nations guarantee them to different degrees and in different ways. The same is true of free speech.
What NGO is saying is that Europe's definition of free speech, to the extent that it does not block Right to be Forgotten, is not expansive enough.
It is meaningless to talk about whether or not "technically" Europe has free speech, in the same way that it is meaningless to talk about whether or not technically China has a right to privacy. When Americans say that European nations don't have real 1A rights, they're saying that Europe does not guarantee those rights strongly enough, based on an idea that these rights are intrinsic and are protected by the state, not granted or defined by the state.
The trouble with strong 1A supporters is that they pretend like the free speech restrictions in the US are not both arbitrary and frequently racially biased due to the slow functioning of the justice system. You cannot shout fire in a crowded theatre, you cannot make direct death threats, you cannot incite riots, you cannot share information as an attorney or as a government agent etc. There's tons of exceptions that have only an arbitrary distinction from European-style exceptions. A common point with all these 1A exceptions is that they apply to the benefit of property owners and people who are otherwise privileged.
I.e. Americans who are strong 1A supporters think these rights are intrinsic and protected by the state because the exceptions to free speech pretty much all work in their favour, so they don't mind them.
Um, Yes, you can shout fire in a crowded theate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
If no one panics, then you generally don't get charged with anything, except possibly trespassing.
Also I'd like to point out that many of the landmark cases establishing the doctrine of "imminent lawless action" were defending the rights of far-left political activists. I'm not sure I buy into your "free speech for the privileged" theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
Also, I'm not sure that I see how your links support your claims. The first and third were ruled against the far-left activist, and the second was overturned but on the 14th amendment (not 1st).
In America, there are active efforts by members of the government to classify Antifa as a hate group. Facebook famously got a lot of flack over their decisions about whether or not "white men" count as a protected category. And again, I wouldn't be surprised if there are people on HN who disagree over whether or not protected categories should be extended to historically privileged groups.
The thing is, ignoring intrinsic rights, both free speech and censorship are still neutral tools. Regardless of what direction you lean, there will be efforts by the powerful to use the tools you embrace to suppress others. The conflict is figuring out what the proper balance is to make it difficult to abuse those neutral tools.
But it's not simple to claim, "people should only be allowed to say good things," for the same reason why it's not simple to claim, "only the government should be able to unlock my phone." You have to figure out where to draw a line between encryption and warrants, bearing in mind that corrupt individuals will take advantage of both.
The examples that GP linked were decided against far-left activists based on the idea that free speech wasn't absolute. Many of them are regarded as negative precedents now, moments in history that we're ashamed of. I'm ashamed that America tried to use the law to prevent people from protesting the draft.
Of course free speech isn't absolute. But that doesn't mean that discussions about how far we should go are meaningless, or that anyone who suggests that a law is too restrictive is actually just a secret absolutist. Historically, free speech rights in the US have grown over time, not shrunk. That suggests that as far the US is concerned, we think that historically we didn't take those rights far enough -- and usually whenever we put limits on free speech we did so to the exclusion of good faith protesters and minorities.
This makes many 1A advocates nervous about reintroducing those limits, because a large portion of the examples we have about enforcement of those limits in the past were used to suppress and harm activists.
Of course it's reasonable to disagree on that front; you probably have experiences in your own life that have convinced you that the European model is better. Those differing experiences are a good reason for us to look for laws that respect national autonomy where possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#...
Starting with that Germany example: there's a common pattern of saying "all Germany bans is Nazi propaganda, surely you don't object to that?", but it's not actually true. Germany bans 'insult', a category which produces upwards of 20,000 convictions per year. Disparaging the symbols of the state is prohibited, and a lèse-majesté law was present and occasionally enforced until January 2018. Distributing pornographic writing remains restricted, as does insulting a faith in a manner that could disturb the peace - both classes of law which are infamous around the world for enabling biased prosecutions along religious lines. And when it comes to the mechanisms of speech, Germany set the precedent on the infamously terrible 'link tax' rule being floated for the EU as a whole.
On to the question of the US First Amendment: 1A critics often have a blindspot about how the presence of extremely strong free speech protections anywhere helps people everywhere in the digital era.
The UK, for example, has ludicrous internet censorship standards ranging from banning hosting for large classes of content to ISP-level site blocking. (And it turns out those powers have been consistently used to enable copyright abusers and restrict LGBT content, exactly like free speech advocates predicted.) But the situation in the UK isn't terribly bad - because offending content is hosted under US laws and served back to the UK! We see this pattern all over. Turkish dissidents graffiti the IPs of US-hosted content to bypass DNS blocks. Chinese firewall-bypassers end up on Taiwanese and US sites for regime-critical news. Bangladeshi student protestors share videos on Firechat that eventually end up on Reddit under 1A protections. The 'right to be forgotten' itself acts as a bar to cursory investigation instead of full information hiding because US-based search retains removed results.
If free speech absolutism means saying "German and Chinese speech laws are equally unacceptable", then sure, that's absurd. But jumping from "Germany isn't totalitarian" to "1A stringency is needless because Germany's fine" is the same sort of mistake in the opposite direction.
You have a few examples right here in this thread, and you don't care. As usual.
Not good. Most of the western world doesn't have free speech.
> it merely threatens the extremely expansive interpretation of Free Speech in America's First Amendment.
It isn't an "expansive" interpretation. It's the definition of free speech.
Your "western democracies" have the same understanding of free speech as saudi arabia, russia and china does ( aka "you are free to say things only we approve of" ). That's not free speech by any definition.
Besides, when it comes to things like free speech or human rights, one should err on the side of too much free speech or human rights rather than less.
You can't err on the side of both of them, so what do you do? You have to balance them, which is something that the European courts have been doing for a long time now.
I think the French do the same (and have even taken the term "practical concordance"), but I'm not really sure.
The claimed interpretation of "absolute free speech" helps drive the narrative of "we're better than everyone else", but both quoted concepts are bullshit.
You could at least try the "fire in a crowded theater argument." Though even that isn't truly limited today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
This is a non-trivial difference.