'Privacy' The Latest Tool Being Used For Censorship

from the right-to-be-forgotten dept

Fri, Mar 11th 2011 12:30pm — Mike Masnick

In the last few months, we've written a few times about the EU's bizzare fascination with a "right to be forgotten," which is a bizarre attempt to create laws that would let individuals demand that anything they don't like about themselves be deleted from the internet. The argument supporting this is always that it's a form of a "privacy" right, but that's not true. A right to privacy is about keeping your private info private. This "right to be forgotten" is usually about trying to block public info. However, the EU is still pushing forward with this idea, apparently not realizing how disastrous it would actually be in practice. Supporters have mocked concerns about free speech, claiming that we Americans "fetishize" free speech.

But this goes beyond just a basic free speech claim or a privacy claim. This is really about censorship. Berin Szoka points us to a great analysis by Peter Fleischer about how a "right to be forgotten" is really about censorship. Fleischer is Chief Privacy Counsel for Google, but wrote this on his personal blog, rather than as an official Google position.

More and more, privacy is being used to justify censorship. In a sense, privacy depends on keeping some things private, in other words, hidden, restricted, or deleted. And in a world where ever more content is coming online, and where ever more content is find-able and share-able, it's also natural that the privacy counter-movement is gathering strength. Privacy is the new black in censorship fashions. It used to be that people would invoke libel or defamation to justify censorship about things that hurt their reputations. But invoking libel or defamation requires that the speech not be true. Privacy is far more elastic, because privacy claims can be made on speech that is true.

Privacy as a justification for censorship now crops up in several different, but related, debates: le droit a l'oubli, the idea that content (especially user-generated content on social networking services) should auto-expire, the idea that data collection by companies should not be retained for longer than necessary, the idea that computers should be programmed to "forget" just like the human brain. All these are movements to censor content in the name of privacy. If there weren't serious issues on both sides of the debate, we wouldn't even be talking about this.

The whole thing is a good read. He breaks down the component issues, to get around the attempts by some to conflate very different issues to support a right to be forgotten.

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Filed Under: censorship, europe, privacy, right to be forgotten

25 Comments

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crade (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 11:58am

The word private has several meanings and implications, and I believe the way it is being used here refers to the design and intent of the information, not to the current availability or level of secrecy.
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Miles Barnett (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 12:36pm

How will they square this up with the previous post about France requiring data retention? You can't retain it and delete it at the same time.
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 12:41pm

Re: Invraisemblable!
You forget sir, legislating and enforcing logical impossible things is a government's bread and butter. It's called 'having your cake and eating it too.' I think there's a South Park episode about it...
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Hopeful, 11 Mar 2011 @ 12:42pm

what about Pederasses
Would this mean sex offenders could demand to have there names removed from all the sex offender tracking sites.
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ComputerAddict (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 12:49pm

Re: what about Pederasses
That, and every news article, blog post, and memorial to their victims.
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BBT, 11 Mar 2011 @ 12:56pm

"The argument supporting this is always that it's a form of a "privacy" right, but that's not true. A right to privacy is about keeping your private info private."

Are you sure? Let's imagine a hypothetical world where legislation has been passed that installs millions of cameras, recording everything that ever happens in a public area. All locations that are open to the public are required to install these cameras (perhaps they're reimbursed for the costs). Microphones are everywhere public, too.

Would such legislation not be a gross violation of privacy? Even though the only things that would be recorded are "public"?

As technology continues to makes surveillance devices cheaper, and recording quality better, and data storage cheaper...this type of issue will become more common. The courts have relied on the faulty premise that there is no right to privacy for things done "in public". Technology is on a steady march to making constant surveillance of everything done "in public" an economically viable idea. When it happens, we'll see just how faulty that premise is.
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Chosen Reject (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 12:58pm

Re:
If you want to invoke your right to be forgotten, they will comply as per the law. Also per the law, they will have to log your invocation of said right, as well as all information they had to delete.

If you want those new logs to be forgotten you will just have to invoke your right to be forgotten again. Granted, that will create a new set of logs with the same information plus the new request to be forgotten.

Your only hope is to create an infinite loop with requests to be forgotten and hope they run out of disk space.
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gojomo (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:01pm

You know a European who'd really like to be forgotten?
Hitler.
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jenningsthecat (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:02pm

What about Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc?
If they were alive today, would they have a "right to be forgotten"?

The EU isn't promoting privacy, they're merely attempting to erase history. They won't succeed because of the nature of the 'Net, but they may establish some dangerous precedents and justifications in the process of trying.

It would be tempting to dismiss this as mere stupidity, if it wasn't also dangerous.
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:07pm

Re: What about Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc?
Don't kid yourself--all stupidity is dangerous, it's just a matter of scale.
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jenningsthecat (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:11pm

Re: Re: What about Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc?
"Don't kid yourself--all stupidity is dangerous, it's just a matter of scale."

Too true!
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Brian Schroth (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:15pm

Re:
whoops, that was me who posted this. And I'm not trying to justify these "Right to forget" laws- they're ridiculous.
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Donny (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:19pm

Re:
I think a key difference is, do you regard yourself as basically public, and when you want conceal something you take steps to do so - wear a trench-coat and sunglasses, close the door, etc - or do you regard yourself as basically private, and the extra steps are what're taken in order to place yourself in the public arena?

That legislation is horrible to the latter, but to the former isn't even worth frowning at.
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Loonesta, 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:21pm

In this case, the definition of "private" is the one that had been used for the last thousand years or so, not the one you children think it ought to be, just to please you.
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Brian Schroth (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:22pm

Why do the law's authors stop at the internet? I should be able to demand the erasure of any information about me, no matter whether it's on the internet or not. If a newspaper publishes an article about me, I demand the right to destroy every copy of that newspaper after the designated time-to-forget it. And if anyone writes a book about me, I really ought to have the right to have a good ol' fashioned book burning after enough time has gone by.

Hell, what if someone out there just has a good memory, and remembers what I did? They'll have to be lobotomized, of course. I have a right to make them forget.
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btr1701 (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 1:54pm

Re: Re: what about Pederasses
> That, and every news article, blog post, and
> memorial to their victims.

Perhaps they could get a court order requiring the victims themselves to forget the incident and who it was that molested them.
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Jose_X, 11 Mar 2011 @ 3:54pm

Re:
techdirt.eu is only going to make money with comments if it blocks each person who wants to comment in order to avoid the liability that each and every comment might one day have to be deleted to please someone somewhere.
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zenmeister (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 4:00pm

Forget This. . .
Spider Robinson: Melancholy Elephants http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
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Atkray (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 5:30pm

Availibility
"Your only hope is to create an infinite loop with requests to be forgotten and hope they run out of disk space."

What platform do I need to run this application?
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freak (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 6:24pm

Re: Availibility
A macro that recursively calls itself and pulls garbage collection every so often would do it.

So . . . any platform that can handle the interface.

Oh, wait, your system would have to run faster than their system's storage grows, which might actually be a problem.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 11:11pm

Re:
In this case, the definition of "private" is the one that had been used for the last thousand years or so, not the one you children think it ought to be, just to please you.

Can you elaborate?
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iveseenitall, 11 Mar 2011 @ 11:43pm

Wait a minute.
I'm still trying to digest the individuals have no expectation of privacy in public places or when sending unencrypted emails mantra.
If the above mentioned right to be forgotten becomes a right will will we ever find Osama Bin Laden?
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2011 @ 1:19am

the idea that computers should be programmed to "forget" just like the human brain

"C:\Windows\system32"? Sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place it... *BSOD*
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Fungo Knubb (profile), 12 Mar 2011 @ 2:13pm

Re: Forget This. . .
Not only an excellent story, but quite plausible to boot.

Thanks for sharing that!
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nasch (profile), 12 Mar 2011 @ 6:34pm

Free speech or censorship?
But this goes beyond just a basic free speech claim or a privacy claim. This is really about censorship.

What's the difference between a free speech issue and a censorship issue? Isn't censorship by definition the abridgment of freedom of speech?
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