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GDPR Being Used to Remove Court Cases from the Internet

posted by martyb on Monday September 24 2018, @02:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the If-it's-not-written-down-it-doesn't-exist? dept.

exaeta writes:

The GDPR "right to be forgotten" is now being used to remove court cases from the internet. Seems the "right to be forgotten" is on a collision course with free speech and open government.

The complaint against Bujaldon is fairly damning, and while Bujaldon tried to get the case dismissed, the court was not at all impressed. The current docket suggests that the parties are attempting to work out a settlement, but having yourself be a defendant accused of real estate and securities fraud can't be good for the old reputation.

Never fear, however, for the GDPR has a Right to be Forgotten in it, and Bujaldon is apparently using it to delete his own name from the dockets for which he is a defendant

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180920/17133740682/gdpr-being-used-to-try-to-disappear-public-us-court-docket.shtml

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Monday September 24 2018, @06:31AM (3 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday September 24 2018, @06:31AM (#739082) Homepage Journal

    IANAL, but the "right to be forgotten" is specifically limited. [gdpr-info.eu] In the case of a service that documents court cases, only the first clause is relevant: Data must be erased, if "the personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed". None of the other clauses apply.

    For the purposes of documenting current court cases, this is clearly not true. These organizations need to pay for an hour of some lawyer's time, and get a letter on letterhead telling these idiots where to stuff it.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday September 24 2018, @06:52AM (2 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Monday September 24 2018, @06:52AM (#739087)
    I think that "paying for an hour of some lawyer's time" is part of the problem here; that costs money and it's easier for a third party like a web host to just roll over and take the easy way out. Several companies, including Greenspan's webhost and PACER, have already done so and the result (so far) seems to be a partial dedaction of Bujaldon name to just initials or removal of the documents altogether. OK, I'll concede that Aaron Greenspan's webhost (Hetzner, for those who may also be hosted with them and would prefer an ISP with a legal spine) may be on softer ground; they're hosting a site that is reporting on official documentation, not actually the authoritative source for them. At least they compromised on initials though; those those behind the PACER redaction need to grow a pair and actually read some legal documents instead of just indexing and archiving them. The complete exemption from RTBF for official court documentation - which PACER is - is about as black and white as you can get.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

    • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Monday September 24 2018, @09:29AM (1 child)

      by exaeta (6957) on Monday September 24 2018, @09:29AM (#739104) Homepage Journal

      Might you be thinking of PACERMonitor instead?

      I use PACER myself, and I don't think the U.S. Court system would take kindly to someone trying to censor the official federal government court document tracking filing and retrieving system.

      --
      The Government is a Bird

      • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday September 24 2018, @11:06AM

        by zocalo (302) on Monday September 24 2018, @11:06AM (#739120)
        Yes, you're correct - PACERMonitor, not the actual Federal PACER system. My bad - I didn't realise that the former wasn't effectively just a portal onto the the latter.
        --
        UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!