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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story concerning Google's enforcement of search privacy laws across international borders:
What if links to stories about someone's past—stories about defrauding an international business or about medical tourism malpractice—were removed from Google search in your country, not because of your local laws but because someone was able to use the laws of another country. How would you feel about that?
That question may seem simplistic. But it goes to the heart of a very important debate that is taking place now in Europe, initially between some Data Protection Authorities and, next year, in court. At stake: whether Europe's right to be forgotten—which allows people in EU countries to request removal of certain links from name search results—should reach beyond the borders of Europe and into countries which have different laws.
Google believes it should not. That's why, for much of the last year, we've been defending the idea that each country should be able to balance freedom of expression and privacy in the way that it chooses, not in the way that another country chooses.
Can the requirements of different countries be balanced at all?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 12 2016, @02:48PM
Does anyone here know what it's like to live in a small town of about 1000? Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone knows who has light fingers, is promiscuous, a bad driver, a wife (or husband) beater, a cheater, a religious zealot, a drunk, a liar, a deadbeat, or whatever. Secrets can be kept, skeletons can be kept hidden in closets, but it's not easy. Once it's out, it's over. You can forget about being forgotten, because it's not happening. Only thing you can do to escape a bad reputation is move far away.
Years ago my aunt was rejected for a teaching job at a nearby town because some cousins with the same last name had gotten a county-wide reputation for partying hard and sleeping around. She wasn't one of them, but it didn't matter. Blood tells, right? Can't have a woman with loose morals like those cousins soiling our children's minds! It was completely unfair, and the head apologized to her for the board's bad behavior. Nevertheless she had to go elsewhere and ended up teaching 2 counties away.
That little story might seem to support the idea that forgetting is good. In those days, people were pretty stuffy and prudish. Seems a better solution is more tolerance and opportunity. The reason a criminal record is such a dire problem for a job seeker is high unemployment. You don't get rejected for a job because a traffic violation or an unpaid medical debt or some other minor blemish on your record makes you unable to do the work, you get rejected because there are too many people chasing too few jobs, and something like that is a great pretext to reject you.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @03:28PM
> Seems a better solution is more tolerance and opportunity.
And if wishes were horses beggars would ride.
People will always find reasons to judge others as unworthy. Its human nature - the same part of human nature that builds institutions also arbitrarily excludes people from those institutions. The best we can hope for is to inject friction into the process where it will do the most good with the least harm and have good mechanisms for exception handling. But no matter how much we try its never going to be a perfect process because people aren't perfect.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 13 2016, @04:06AM
It's more than human nature. It's population pressure. When people are scarce and valuable, all kinds of crap is forgiven. What matters is whether they can do the job. When people are plentiful, when there are dozens of qualified applicants for one position, then ever more trivial things matter.
I have read that in the 1950s and into the 1960s, a person who earned a PhD had it made. Universities would come to the new doctor with job offers that included good pay, a light teaching schedule, and perks such as a nice big lab. In the 1970s, that began changing. Today, some professors have to supplement their poverty level income with food stamps. Schools have flooded the market with graduates of PhD programs. Schools win in two different ways on that. The oversupply drives down the pay they have to offer to attract professors, and they make a pile of money off the tuition all these doctors had to pay to get the PhD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @07:35AM
> What matters is whether they can do the job.
Pretty much all of American history is proof of the opposite. If you are black that is.
That reductive libertarian fantasy version of the world just does not exist outside of laboratory conditions.