SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A court in the Netherlands ruled this month that a grandmother must remove pictures of her grandchildren from her social media accounts after her daughter filed a privacy complaint.
The grandmother, according to a Gelderland District Court summary, has not been in contact with her daughter for more than a year due to a family argument.
Her daughter has three minor children who appear in pictures the grandmother posted to social media accounts on Facebook and Pinterest. In February, the daughter wrote to her mother, noting that her requests made via the police to remove the photos of her children from social media have been ignored and giving her mother until March 5 to comply or face legal action.
After the grandmother failed to take the photos down, the mother took her complaint to court.
The Dutch implementation of Europe's General Data Protection Act requires that anyone posting photos of minors obtain consent from their legal guardians.
When the court took up the matter in April, the grandmother had removed photos, except for one from Facebook. She wanted that one picture, of the grandson she had cared for from April 2012 through April 2019 while the boy and his father, separated from the mother, lived with her.
The father in the instance of the Facebook image also did not consent to the publication of the image.
[...] Accordingly, the judge gave the grandmother ten days to remove the picture. If it isn't not removed by then, a fine of €50.00 (£45, $55) will be imposed each day the images remain in place, up to a maximum of €1,000 (£900, $1,095).
(Score: 2, Disagree) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 24 2020, @11:55PM (12 children)
I wonder. Let's turn "on a computer" around, to "not on a computer." If grandma carried photos of her grandkids in her purse, and met friends for dinner, gossip, and the passing around and viewing of those photos, could the GDPR be used to stop that? A church or school bulletin board (the old fashioned kind with cork board and push pins) used for posting prints of photos, would those have to be removed?
I've been thinking about privacy for a while now. Simply put, it's a way to hide from potential dangers, keep information from enemies who could use it to hurt, if only they knew it. Enemies come in 2 basic types, opportunistic predatory sorts who have no personal relationship with a potential target, basically "stranger danger", and jealous rivals, bullies, or sadists who know a lot about their target, because they work or go to school with them. The 2nd category is far more common, and the relationship can be much more complicated than a simple evil bit setting. Stranger danger has been massively overblown, and a regulation like the GDPR seems too oriented on that. For the more common problem, it's unreasonable to expect to hide forever from a rival who is often in close proximity, and the GDPR can't change that basic fact of life. Can't skip class for a month to hide that embarrassingly botched new haircut or whatever from the eyes of your classmates. Maybe could walk around with a paper bag over your head all day long, but that is likely to backfire, attracting even more attention.
Enter technology. It's gotten a lot harder to hide, with security and cellphone cameras everywhere, and networking able to disseminate that info worldwide. This huge change has raised the question: what kind of and how much privacy is reasonable to expect? There have always been people who demand unreasonable levels of privacy. It's impractical. We live in a civil society. Protection from deadly dangers is afforded through the enforcement of laws against harm, not hiding.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Monday May 25 2020, @01:26AM (3 children)
Well the GDPR wouldn't apply to either, as it's an on-the internet law; so at that level the question is silly.
I'll presume you didn't mean to make it that silly and it should be read a bit more broadly - would someone that cares about privacy think these are things that should be regulated?
I can't speak for everyone that cares about privacy, but for my own opinion, if she has a physical photo that she obtained legitimately she can show it to anyone she wants, subject to the limitations of the physical photo, whether I like it or not.
When she starts making copies of it and giving those out, then I start to think that she just might be crossing a line. Assuming she doesn't have a written release.
Putting a photo up on the interwebs is the ultimate in making copies and giving them out. Obviously.
/On a computer/ shouldn't change that in any legal or ethical sense, only in the practical sense. It's easier to do legitimate things (make a backup) and easier to do questionable things (share without permission.) But whether something is legal or ethical shouldn't have anything to do with how easy it is to do.
"Simply put, it's a way to hide from potential dangers, keep information from enemies who could use it to hurt, if only they knew it."
This isn't so much *wrong* as just /myopic/ but it's far less than a half truth.
Information? You think I am trying to hold down the "information" by not spreading my face around the interwebs?
Is that REALLY the only possible motivation from your vantage point?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 25 2020, @04:30AM (1 child)
Why else is privacy desirable? Avoidance of discrimination by keeping quiet about things that can't be easily determined by appearances, such as religious affiliation, political affiliation, and exact age? To forestall the envy of people who want something they can seize upon to compare themselves to you, and by that measure possibly conclude that you have more? To keep our privates private, hidden under clothing? To provide an escape valve, from overly restrictive social mores and wrongheaded laws? What would you add to that? It's really not useful to blindly accept privacy as good and desirable, without being as clear as possible just what that means, and why it's so great.
> But whether something is legal or ethical shouldn't have anything to do with how easy it is to do.
Maybe. But from a practical perspective, it does matter. Also, one aspect of "easy to do" is that few have any objection, because the act in question is no potential threat to them. In other words, it's natural law. I mean by that not just easy to commit, but easily accepted by others.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday May 25 2020, @04:45AM
A very common and legitimate motivation.
"To forestall the envy"
Frankly, yes, and again completely legitimate.
"To keep our privates private, hidden under clothing?"
Should we not be allowed to do that now?
Has it been declared counter-revolutionary to be shy?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday May 25 2020, @05:28AM
Well, there are also legal restrictions for physical photos. For example, if for some reason she wanted to publish it on a magazine, she would have to get a model release. I think the same would apply if she wanted to present it at a gallery.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Absolutely.Geek on Monday May 25 2020, @01:33AM (5 children)
Your basic assumption is wrong for a lot of people.
As a parent of young kids; I don't want their pictures on any social media; not because of any imagined "enemy" or nefarious plot against them or the family. But simply because their image is theirs; until they can give informed consent about how it is used; then the default should be privacy. Not privacy at any cost but at a reasonable cost i.e. telling the grandmothers etc that the pictures I send are not to be put on Facebook or Instagram etc...
Also conflating the online and offline versions of this is a strange comparison to make; in one situation the image is tied intrinsically to an object not easily copied and distributed; in the other the image is stored somewhere on a server, distributed with basically no effort and easily copied from one place (FB for example) to another (say Instagram). In the offline situation losing control of an image is easy but basically harmless; in the other it is a little harder; but an error in the "privacy" settings on a service means the image can (and does) get scraped by some algorithm and can end up in some stock photo archive or worse.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Absolutely.Geek on Monday May 25 2020, @03:23AM (1 child)
Comedy is not really what I was going for; but it will do.
Not sure why I'm getting modded funny.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @05:38AM
It is a recent trend from the local trolls. Their attempt to minimize points they don't like.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 25 2020, @09:16PM (2 children)
> As a parent of young kids; I don't want their pictures on any social media;
Do you also skip the photo sessions for yearbooks, which is customary across the US? Group photos of the entire class are also common. The whole town has access to those. Anyone could scan and post anything from there. The originals are probably all digital now anyway, and while behind some sort of paywall, they're nevertheless online.
Further, smartphones with cameras are everywhere. Any classmate could take a photo with your kid in it. How can you reasonably expect all that to be policed, and ownership enforced? And more, why bother, what's the harm in it, really?
Then there are security cameras. No doubt they're plastered all over schools, as well as retail outlets.
As for databases, there's passport photos, and driver's license photos, to name just two. Another thrilling one is the mugshot database, should your child ever be accused of some crime. On that last one, probably lots of restrictions for minors, but still, it exists.
The ship has sailed, the sun has set, on this expectation of privacy. And that's okay. Whatever has been lost thereby is surely more than compensated by the many gains.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday May 26 2020, @01:02AM
Only the creation of the real life dystopia. Nothing much, really?
It's just the end of all hope that the next generation will inherit a world no more evil than the one we inherited.
Nothing much? Really?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Tuesday May 26 2020, @02:42AM
Just because something is difficult; does not mean that it is not worthwhile. In fact quite the opposite, often the most worthwhile things are also the most difficult. But in reality keeping the kids off of the net isn't all that difficult.
In the future it maybe that the kids will thank us for the small amount of effort we have put in to keep them out of the all seeing eye of the marketing dragnet. I doubt they will be unhappy that we didn't plaster them all over the internet.
Also I don't live in America where it seems things are different; here in New Zealand, we do expect privacy; we have the Privacy Act [legislation.govt.nz] which allows us to see what data is being held about us; unfortunately most here don't realize that with social media companies the data you share is not held under the laws of the country that you reside in but in the country where they get the best deal. Also the data you give them is theirs not yours; so good luck getting them to delete anything completely.
This is much more effort then just a few clicks; also it is really hard to write an automated script to get a person to scan and post pictures.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday May 25 2020, @05:33AM
Of course not. But if she gave them to a magazine for publication, she certainly would need permission (known as model release), even without GDPR.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Monday May 25 2020, @10:23AM
Ask a lawyer - maybe you could get some sort of restraining order. Certainly, if the parents/guardians ask Granny to stop, then she should - no ifs or buts. The church would almost certainly take down the pictures if asked by the parents and in the 21st century most reputable schools wouldn't put up photos without consent (even pre-GDPR).
Thing is, though, Granny can only show her photos to a few dozen people. They're not going to be accessible in Darkest Madeupistan. There are no bots searching the purses of the world's grandmas for pervert-friendly photos. They're not going to get seen by abusive ex-partner when Arsebook auto-tags them their original names. Granny's polaroids aren't going to end up as Fake Cancer Kids in an email scam or as the poster children for an anti-vax campaign. They're not going to go viral because one of the kids looks like baby Yoda. They're not going to be Embarrassing Constipation Meme Kids on a million tweets. When Granny shows some poor victim a baby photo, she doesn't implicitly grant that person non-exclusive rights to copy and use that image for commercial purposes.
The scale, and potential for abuse, of electronic data is orders of magnitude beyond what was possible with physical media. That's why it needs different laws.