[kd3]

What about my right to remember?? What right does anyone else have to demand that you forget something? Do they have more say about your body than you yourself? If so, you are a slave.

When tech merges with brains will they demand intrusion to delete what they don't want you to remember?

[twiceaday]

You are arguing against an oversimplified slogan. The actual ruling is about the right for your public information to not be indexed and publicized.

[kd3]

You have as much rights over 'your' public info as everyone else. You can't dictate to others what to do with it without violating their rights. Therefore, people should learn to think before they act instead of complaining when their acts become public and try to take it down. Edward Snowden has a nice personal bit on this in his new book.

[Yptur]

Well, you can and it is being done? I have no problem with this whatsoever, not everything needs to be online.

[s_dev]

You can still remember -- you're just restricted from publishing or storing insecurely. Privacy effectively means the right to be left alone.

[tuscen]

So am I restricted to tell you what I know about someone?

[tobr]

Under specific circumstances, yeah.

[PureParadigm]

Wouldn't that seem to violate the idea of freedom of speech? What if someone running for public office requests that I "forget" and not share what I know about some bad things they did in the past?

[tobr]

Perhaps it would, but there are plenty of other restrictions on freedom of speech. And this particular law does not apply to news media etc, as far as I understand - just search engines and similar databases.

[PureParadigm]

Sure, of course there are and should be reasonable restrictions (shouting fire in a crowded theater causing immediate danger, for example). But is this a restriction that society should accept? How could you expect to have a functioning democracy if a politician could make people "forget" to stop them from sharing any inconvenient facts about the politician's past actions?

And perhaps I want to make a list of sources where you can search for information about politicians to hold them accountable. If it's not censorship for them to be able to stop me from linking to true things they don't want people to see about them, then what is?

[greglindahl]

This law has been used to disappear search results from newspaper site search engines.

If it can't be found by anyone, isn't that about the same as deleting it?

[ownagefool]

Europeans don't necessarily have "freedom of speech". Not in the same ways Americans see it.

[umvi]

Europeans overestimate the benevolence of their governing bodies. Things that limit freedoms of people are the same as things that empower government

[kd3]

The way I see it, this European law is already quite dangerous and will become more so as tech merges with our brains. People might wake up one day having 'forgotten,' for example that Trump grabbed someone by the pussy, because some court decided so. Similar to how users saw copies of the book 1984 disappear from their Kindles not long ago because Amazon felt like it.

[tuscen]

If these specific circumstances are NDAs, classified government information and such, that is completely okay because they require a knowingly signed contract violation of which leads to fines and charges. The problem with RTBF is that there's no such contract, or rather it's implicit.

[bilbo0s]

Unless you store it on servers in Asia or the US.

That's kind of the ginormous loophole in the whole RTBF issue. If you can't compel anyone in the US or Asia to remove anything, then you're pretty much a$$ out.

[s_dev]

I don't see such limitations as a bad thing. EU has made it clear -- you don't want to be on board -- fine, it's unenforceable. Just don't expect to be able to make a commerical presense in the largest trading bloc in the world.

This is acceptable/ignorable to little business across the world while giant corporations like Facebook or Google can't ignore it.

[tobr]

Please. No one is literally requiring you to stop remembering things. It’s about scrubbing sensitive information from certain public databases. There are all sorts of other limits on what type of information you are allowed to publish in what circumstances, and none of it applies to your actual memories.

[datenhorst]

Come on now, if you "remembered" anyway, surely you'd have nothing against the information being removed from an index?

This is more about the right not to have everything you ever did tattooed on your forehead.

[umvi]

> When tech merges with brains will they demand intrusion to delete what they don't want you to remember?

Yes, but only if it is possible to index/search/dump the contents of people's brains. In that case we are walking video cameras violating people's privacy everywhere we go, and it is only logical that we should mandate people get their brains wiped of privacy infringing information.

How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public? That is a gross violation of your privacy and illegal theft of your data. Wouldn't you want that person's brain to be wiped of information they have on you to protect your rights?

[danShumway]

> and illegal theft of your data

People are free to hide information or to take steps to obscure it, but I do not believe that anyone can own a fact.

Even if we were broadly in agreement that Right to Be Forgotten was a good idea, you still would not be able to own a fact. We sometimes create exceptions to people's right to share data and grant individuals/companies temporary monopolies over certain kinds of information -- the best example of this is IP law.

However, even someone who owns a copyright can't morally claim that they literally own the information. The state has given them a temporary monopoly in the interest of promoting public good, but there is no intrinsic moral right to IP that they can claim they have. Laws of this nature are a restriction of rights that we tolerate because of potential social benefits.

The system you are proposing goes far beyond the current Right to Be Forgotten.

> How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public?

People can already do that. They can go post on blogs or Twitter that they saw you do something. We already have a mechanism for indexing, searching, and dumping the contents of brains: fingers and a computer keyboard.

Right to Be Forgotten is controversial, but what you propose is much stricter. If Right to Be Forgotten tried to essentially make knowledge forbidden -- to make it illegal to write down your memories or post them online -- it wouldn't just be controversial; practically no one would support it.

[febeling]

> How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public?

That sounds like a partial definition of journalism

[nordsieck]

> How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public?

You mean like PIs?

> That is a gross violation of your privacy and illegal theft of your data.

Most people don't like it, but it's certainly not illegal.

[umvi]

> You mean like PIs?

Yes, but they have a government-approved license to do so, normal citizens do not. Random civilians aren't allowed to just PI people.

In terms of privacy rights, it would be for the best if people had mandatory implants inserted at birth that automatically prevented brains from recording things about other people in public that haven't consented to your recording. I'm thinking something like White Christmas (Black Mirror) where the default is that strangers that haven't opted in are fuzzed out visually and audibly. This would be a huge win for privacy rights.

[nordsieck]

> Yes, but they have a government-approved license to do so, normal citizens do not.

I mean, so do hair dressers. That doesn't stop people from cutting their friend's hair. You just can't charge for it.

> Random civilians aren't allowed to just PI people.

In the US, it is legal to video record anyone where they don't have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" (audio recording laws vary much more by State). At a minimum this includes everywhere most people would consider "in public".

> it would be for the best if people had mandatory implants inserted at birth that automatically prevented brains from recording things about other people in public that haven't consented to your recording.

There is really nothing I can add to your statement.

I currently believe very few people would agree with you, but I could be incorrect in that belief.

[umvi]

My point is that there is absolutely no difference between:

- cameras that observe your every move and sell off facial recognition and other data to third parties

- brain indexing/dumping tech that turns people into living cameras that are capable of doing the above.

Thus, if we decide that it is illegal to automatically collect information on people using computers, it shouldn't matter if the computer is electronic or biological in nature, it's a violation of the law either way. If companies aren't allowed to store PII about people without their consent, neither should indexable brains be able to store PII about people without their consent. It's quite simple.

[danShumway]

But... isn't the entire point of White Christmas that this technology has horrifying social consequences?

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but do people really look at Black Mirror episodes and walk away thinking, "that might be a really good idea."?

[nordsieck]

> do people really look at Black Mirror episodes and walk away thinking, "that might be a really good idea."?

Apparently at least one person did.

[umvi]

> But... isn't the entire point of White Christmas that this technology has horrifying social consequences?

Yes, and the point of my commentary is that privacy zealotry itself has horrifying social consequences when taken to its logical conclusions

[traderjane]

You don't need a government approved license to wait outside places where you know celebrities will show up and take pictures of them to sell.

[bilbo0s]

>In that case we are walking video cameras violating people's privacy everywhere we go

This is actually not true in the US. So people should be careful and understand their rights.

In the US, the government affords us no expectation of privacy when we are in public. As soon as you step out of the hotel room you and your mistress went to at lunch, it's completely legal for a private investigator to snap photos or record video of you.

Basically, when you're out in public in the US, you have no right to privacy. So when people have amazon rings, or google glasses, or brain interfaces that record everything while they're in public, all that information is fair game for the authorities in any court action.

[GhettoMaestro]

Business idea: Privacy zones. No photography, no video-recording, no audio-recording. In fact, maybe some venues would even ban phones (like a SCIF!).

And, facial ID scanning at the door to ban repeat offenders.

For sex and swinger clubs this would be ideal. Keeps the privacy of the inside intact.

[thfuran]

>How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public

I wouldn't like it but I wouldn't want it to be illegal either.

[icelancer]

>> How would you like it if people sold information about you based on what they saw and heard you do in public? That is a gross violation of your privacy and illegal theft of your data. Wouldn't you want that person's brain to be wiped of information they have on you to protect your rights?

It definitely is not a violation of your privacy and it is not illegal theft of data either.

[umvi]

Ok, so can I install facial recognition software in my store and have it observe your every move and sell what I observe to third parties? That's the same exact thing.

[kd3]

Umvi: Is there privacy in a public space? If you do something in public, how is that private? You expect to silence people about something you did in public?