[oji0hub]

"The emails suggested that the firm was seeking access to records about its staff and customers from a police database holding millions of names and the personal information of criminals, victims and even witnesses."

Wait... is this about protecting criminals?

[cerebellum42]

I don't think you have to be a criminal to be in some sort of police database. And even if it did mean that, it should make no difference as to how their privacy is treated. If anything, a police database should have higher bars to third party access on privacy grounds than almost any other kind of database. The only thing that should be public are court records.

[distances]

Furthermore, I firmly believe court records should not be public en masse but rather only individually. It should not be trivial to just check a name and see if they've been convicted of something. Sentence served should mean you don't have lingering repercussions.

[cerebellum42]

There's a balance there - the court records need to be public so that the justice system can be held accountable by the public in some way, and records need to be available to inform precedent for future decisions. That needs to be weighed against what you mentioned, the impact of the availability of those records on the people they are about.

[avianlyric]

Unlike the US, Europe doesn’t make a habit of punishing criminals for the rest of their lives, and forcing them into further criminality.

As a general rule, if you’ve served your time, then you’ve repaid your debt to society and should no longer be punished.

Having employers apply extra-judicial punishment to those how have already been sentenced and and served their time is kinda barbaric, and totally defeats the point of having a justice system.

[oji0hub]

> As a general rule, if you’ve served your time, then you’ve repaid your debt to society and should no longer be punished.

If you served your time, you spent the amount of time in prison that the judge decided you should spend in prison. That's it. There is no repayment. There does not have to be any reparation, remorse or consistency to the punishment.

> Having employers apply extra-judicial punishment to those how have already been sentenced and and served their time is kinda barbaric

You probably don't want the pedophile repeat offender to work at your daughters kindergarten. He has no right to be there and he is unsuitable. Not getting a job is not punishment.

[avianlyric]

> If you served your time, you spent the amount of time in prison that the judge decided you should spend in prison.

Erm yeah, they’ve been judged by the judicial system that as a society we’ve agreed gets to decide that repayment to society looks like. Don’t like it, change the laws, you presumably live in a democracy.

> You probably don't want the pedophile repeat offender to work at your daughters kindergarten. He has no right to be there and he is unsuitable. Not getting a job is not punishment.

Again, there are already legal constructs that handle this, and are managed by the judicial system. Bound by the laws created by democratically elected leaders.

Also what does kinder-garden have to do with IKEA? If you’re leaving your kids at IKEA as a substitute for kinder-garden, then I’ve got news for you.

[gostsamo]

Surprisingly, criminals also have rights. Unsurprisingly, not only criminals are in such databases.

[himinlomax]

It's rather surprising that you focused so much on criminals that you missed the next two nouns: victims and witnesses.