Comment by danShumway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danShumway | Hacker News Reader

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- The right to be informed as to what data will be collected, and how it will be used

- The right to opt out of data collection or sharing

- The right to be told if a website has data on you, and what that data is

- The right to be forgotten; to have all data related to you deleted upon request

- The right to be informed if ownership of your data changes hands

- The right to be informed of any data breaches including your information in a timely manner

- The right to download all data in a standardized format to port to another platform

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The vast majority of these rights only work when applied to commercial entities. They don't protect you from government invasion, and they don't protect you from individual/social invasion. When applied on the individual level, many of them are flat-out unconsitutional (the right to be forgotten is a particularly obvious example).

Does this matter? Is it a problem if we specifically target corporations first? I think it does matter.

Even though corporations are currently some of the worst privacy offenders, I think there's real harm in orienting the privacy debate around Capitalist terms, and I think it sets a really bad precedent for future conversations. I strongly suspect that a pivot to talking about privacy as a property right being violated will make it easier for the government to dismiss future criticism, and easier for malicious groups to claim that data from public sources should be fair game.

My right to privacy is not based on the idea that I am being economically harmed. It's based on the idea that I have a fundamental right to hide my identity, and a fundamental right to choose what I disclose to the people around me. Money has nothing to do with it.

This proposal also goes against years of collective advocacy from activists for both an Open web and a private web that no one can own a fact. I firmly believe that the expansion of IP laws are counterproductive, even when expanded ostensibly for the sake of privacy.

Andrew Yang may speak for some members of the privacy community, but he doesn't speak for all of them. I really wish the politicians who are just now jumping on the privacy train would spend more time looking at the history behind these debates and the history of the activists that were working before them.

How is the right to be forgotten unconstitutional? I would think me being able to have my data deleted upon my request wouldn't necessarily infringe on my own freedoms, but I could be wrong.

Freedom of speech includes the right to spread the truth about others. The "right" to be forgotten is the right to silence others.

Why are you implying that the right to be forgotten only applies to silencing "truths?"

What truth am I forcing someone to be silent about if I simply don't want my personal data used for malicious or unwarranted commercial purposes?

It not that the Right to be Forgotten only applies to truths, it's that in addition to everything else, it also applies to truths.

If people are spreading lies about you in the US, you can sue them for defamation. Beyond that, silencing someone because what they're saying 'isn't relevant' goes against the US interpretation of the 1st Amendment.

Arguably, we can create exceptions there for corporations (although we should expect a few court cases about it). But the (US) government can't restrict me as an individual from talking about another person's past in private or public spaces.

The right to keep and bear arms exists, yet it's illegal to commit murder with a firearm. The right to vote exists, but not the right to commit vote fraud. The fact that a right can be abused is not a valid argument that it doesn't, or shouldn't exist.

If one objects to the right to be forgotten altogether, then one objects to the right to demand that even false and libelous content can be removed from the internet. You can sue for defamation, but you can't prevent the publication and spread of defaming content.

>But the (US) government can't restrict me as an individual from talking about another person's past in private or public spaces.

Yes but the right to be forgotten doesn't apply to private or public spaces, it applies to data on the internet, or am I mistaken?

Harm principle.

The government doesn't ban firearms, automobiles, knives, etc. because they have potential to cause harm, so why would the government break freedoms to censor information on the basis that it has potential to cause harm?

Defamation (libel/slander) is not a crime and is not censurable as such, but you can be sued for the damages (harm) that it causes. You are free within your first amendment rights to leave that defaming information up after it is proven to cause harm in civil court, but then you are still liable for the damage it continues to cause.

> You are free within your first amendment rights to leave that defaming information up after it is proven to cause harm in civil court, but then you are still liable for the damage it continues to cause.

IANAL, but this is a weird interpretation to me. I'm not sure how to describe a court fining you for publishing information other than, "compelling you to remove that information."

I dunno, this really doesn't line up with my understanding of libel laws.

Of course, bear in mind that the Right to Be Forgotten has very, very little to do with libel. If we were just talking about libel, we'd use existing libel laws. The fact that Right to Be Forgotten exists in addition to libel laws should be enough to show that it is targeting different information.

I dislike that people bring up libel when debating Right to Be Forgotten, because I view libel laws as largely irrelevant to the debate. It's just trope #3 again[0].

[0]: https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...

I didn't bring it up - I was explaining how it's different and not a form of government censorship.

The 1st Amendment, as it is interpreted in the USA, bars this. It's not absolutism that's blocking a US Right to Be Forgotten, it's decades of court precedence. It's not arguing that we can never restrict information ever, it's just that the US Supreme court has consistently ruled that publishing factual information is protected.

> If one objects to the right to be forgotten altogether, then one objects to the right to demand that even false and libelous content can be removed from the internet. You can sue for defamation, but you can't prevent the publication and spread of defaming content.

We have exceptions to the 1st Amendment for defamation and copyright. They are very, very narrow exceptions.

The Right to Be Forgotten works in Europe largely because Europe has different standards than the US on what Freedom of Speech means. When a US citizen and a European citizen talk about Freedom of Speech, they're not necessarily talking about the same thing.

That's not to say Europe's take is necessarily wrong. But it is to say that Andrew Yang is running to be the president of the US, so the European interpretation of Free Speech isn't relevant to his platform proposals.

> the right to be forgotten doesn't apply to private or public spaces, it applies to data on the internet

Public/private spaces don't go away on the Internet.

A corporation or private actor can delete content from a forum/website they control for any reason. They have a Freedom of Association. But the US government may not compel them to do so, except where that content falls into extremely narrow exceptions that have been carved out over decades of legal debate.

The right to be forgotten has been used to sue news sites into shutting down, for not taking down past stories that are factual: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/technology/right-to-be-fo...

Agreed. Privacy should be right for the everyday person, and not a right for the powerful, who should have no right to privacy. Progressive rights make a lot of sense in a context where people with power can take a right that is helpful in most contexts and twist it to increase their personal power and harm others.

How does requiring a company to delete info from a specific computer materially impact the ability for others to speak truth?

It feels like you’re talking purely philosophically and ignoring the nuance of our legal system.

SCOTUS, including right wing literalists, have held that Constitutional rights are not iron clad in all contexts.

Main Street seems to believe the first amendment is very broad, but then there’s the whole shouting fire in a crowded room. Instigating acts of violence and threats, etc.

Freedom from and freedom to are distinct concepts in our legal system.

Which is why we have things like patents and copyrights.

I fail to see the issue you bring up.

Yup. Governments enforcing information about individuals to be deleted is a form of censorship that violates the first amendment. GDPR tries to make stipulations about how deletions related to 'public interest' do not need to be deleted, but they are still enforcing government-backed censorship.

It's something that some people want, obviously, but is the government really the best candidate to enforce it?

Who will if the government does not? What entity has power is greater than the corporation who can force them to act?

What are the requirements? If having power is the top priority requirement, then China's information censorship is okay.

Personal opinion - freedom of speech should apply to people, and not corporations. If you want to publish "truths", then do it as an individual, don't hide behind a corporate shield.

These rights are strikingly similar to the ones outlined in GDPR.

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