It's not clear to me what the difference is between a government censoring someone directly and a government making it impossible for anyone to find a piece of information. Right to Be Forgotten only works if it becomes prohibitively expensive for a company or individual to locate past articles. So who cares whether or not the original source has been taken down?

It's not clear to me why it's not troubling to European citizens for their government to be in charge of what information is and isn't relevant to the public. Whenever I ask people about this, I get the response "well, that's why we have courts." I dunno, Europeans must trust their courts a lot more than I trust mine.

It's not clear to me why this problem couldn't be solved more elegantly by creating anti-discrimination laws around criminal records. If a company gets 90% through the hiring process, runs a background check, and then immediately says "no", then you sue them.

It's also not clear to me that this will be enforceable in the future. I consider distributed site indexing to be an unsolved problem, but I don't think its unsolvable, and people are actively working on it. If for some crazy reason a distributed web search starts getting used on par with DuckDuckGo in the next 5 years, what do you do about that? Ban the technology?

Because anti-discrimination laws around criminal records will work about as well as anti-discrimination laws regarding all the other protected classes (race, gender, age, etc.). Companies will very quickly figure out how to work around them, and will find ways to reject candidates for being a member of said protected class without making it apparent that this is the true cause for rejection.

If a company gets 90% through the hiring process, runs a background check, and then immediately says "no", then you sue them.

If this law passes, that will happen about as often as a company telling you to your face, "We're not hiring you because you're {black| a woman| over 40, etc}." What will probably happen is that companies will move the background check step ahead of the interview step. Then, after they've done the background check and had the interview, they can tell you, "Well, sorry, we've decided to go with a different applicant," just as they do today.

The cost of doing interviews to screen candidates is much lower than background checks. Why would a company want to do that step first?

I highly doubt that. An engineer-hour costs roughly $100. A background check probably costs roughly as much as a phone screen, and an order of a magnitude less than an on-site. It'd be pretty easy to do the background check step in between the phone screen and the on-site, and it wouldn't appreciably raise costs to the company.

Also spending money externally appears to the company to cost much more than using internal resources

Subjecting someone to 17 hours of interviews borders on the inhumane.

Plus, interviews are done iteratively; you don't run the whole process for every candidate.

Moreover, background checks are the least likely to actually disqualify candidates, so they are always done last.

A single candidate will do 1-2 screens (this changes over time / role), plus at least 4-5 on-site interviews. That's about 7-8 hours of meetings, minimum. Having interviewed at a number of other SF tech startups, almost all of them had about the same # of interviews.

Once you're past the screen interview, you'll almost always get all 5 interviews in the pool unless you're terrible - it's more efficient to just have the candidate come in once.

Google recommends a 1:1 ratio of prep/feedback time to interview time, so it's ~2 hrs per interview even if you're not involved in the hire / no hire discussion.

The discussion here was specifically that it was likely that background checks would start disqualifying candidates, so maybe it's better to do them up front as that's cheaper than having the interviews done first... I'd say that still makes sense, at least before the pool, if you think there's a reasonable chance they'll get punted.

7 interviews just for the hired candidate (1-2 screeners, 5-6 on-site pool interviews.) Maybe less than 7 hrs if they're cut to 45 mins each.

I think we trust our governments much more than US citizens trust there government. There's a line from Ronald Reagan that goes something like:

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

The great preponderance of people in Europe simply do not think like this. For a huge range of issues that statement would actually sound reassuring in Europe. Essentially, if you believe in the rule of law and democracy, the government is simply ourselves, getting collectively together to fix something.

Note that this doesn't mean we like any particular politician. We despise many politicians. But the idea of government as a force for good still remains in Europe as far as I can see (UK). Sometimes I think the difference between Europe and the US is that we despise our politicians and quite like the non-political part of our government (civil service, NHS, etc). The US appears to hate the non-political part of it too.

Coincidentally, this is how most Americans seem to feel about their government's foreign policy.

Rule of law being the key part. The U.S. has no rule of law, and our legal system doesn't punish those in power or those with money. For some relevant reading, I recommend Greenwald's book, With Liberty and Justice for Some.

Well, there are some fundamental differences in how we do law in the EU, compared to the US.

We don't do the "jury of peers" thing (and I'm still not sure if this if really true or just stories/TV but, aren't juries specifically selected to have no background in the case matter, or legal matter?). Further, it's not unheard of that the judges and lawyers have technical knowledge for technical cases, or at least read up about it. Moreso than the EU-politicians that made the ruling, anyway, hence deferring to courts to sensibly applying the rulings. There seems to be a "you need to be rich in order to get justice" sentiment that I head Americans openly admit to as the status quo, and what I get from the news. This seems to be a bit less severe in the EU (at least in the Netherlands, that I know of). Certainly, expensive lawyers do increase your chances (unfortunately), but it's not a requirement, and if the law is in fact on your side, an affordable lawyer will do, too. And in addition to that, the "if the law is in fact on your side"-part is also easier to determine beforehand and carries a lot less risk, because of the differences between Common Law (US and most English-speaking countries) and Civil Law (rest of the world, basically) legal systems. Basically it means we codify most of our laws into law-books, using a rather standardised form of "legalese". Because of this, we don't do "precedence" like in Common Law systems. Instead we have "jurisprudence", which is a similar idea, but is used by judges as a guideline in cases where reality is ambiguous with respect to the codified law, so to speak.

Now, I didn't really study law, except for a single course (crash course into IP/tech law, part of my CS curriculum) a decade ago, and stuff I read on Wikipedia. So some of the above might not be 100% accurate, and the conclusions are obviously my opinion. But even then, that's at least some reasons to place some trust in our courts :)

I do think that American courts have a problem with this, and I do wish Americans cared more about it. It's fairly standard to hear people over here talk about whether or not something is legal and say "Oh, but I'm not a lawyer, make sure you consult with one before making any decisions."

That always irritates me. Our laws ostensibly exist for the common people, not lawyers. It reminds me of the stereotypical olden churches where only a few people would get to read or understand the Bible. It feels dirty.

Folks say "you should consult with a lawyer" when the topic is something that's too obscure or marginal to be obvious to a non-lawyer... that doesn't mean the laws are overly complex, just that there are always going to be marginal situations.

I absolutely love how our laws are relatively small, how precedent is from the Supreme Court only, and how most people don’t have any contact with lawyers in their entire life.

We have elements of common law in the US code, and you can definitely have binding precedent that doesn't involve the Supreme Court. As for most folks not having any contact with lawyers... I'm not sure I've met any adult who hasn't.

That's how US Constitution was written (not that it helped a lot - there's still hot debate about what "abridging the freedom of speech" or "to keep and bear arms" means). But most of the other laws are about as readable to the common man as a patch against dense APL code is readable to a seven year old. You may encounter some words you think you recognize. And then there are bylaws and regulations, which most people don't even know exist and some are impossible to get without paying money (yes, really). And then in common law system there's caselaw which is court decision having the power of law. Common man has the chance of a snowball in a nuclear reactor.

You're not going to use a VPN to search "from another country" unless you already know or suspect something but can't find any information on it and suspect the reason is because you are searching from the EU rather than the USA!

The EU has pressured Google to censor its results globally, as I recall. But Google has prevailed on that, at least. So far, anyway.

When China or Russia does it, it's at least "censorship", and probably also "dictatorship".

But Google would probably say "no" to many of them.

That would suck.

and they lost the case in 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Spain_v_AEPD_and_Mario_...), and 'interpreted it' as 'we'll just limit the results from Europe'. This was a landmark case, and they just keep losing them.

Edit: So yes, I see https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/respect-european-law-goog...

So what, Google could nuke all of its business operations in the EU, I suppose.

In general it is always impossible to have this conversation because the idea of "free speech" is very different in America compared to Europe.

Is there something I'm missing about Right to be Forgotten then? Why is this needed if it's already illegal to discriminate against someone over minor crimes or scandals?

Does the law not have much teeth or something?

Case-in-point: Facebook. Most people don't believe that when you ask a company like Facebook or Google to delete your account, they actually delete your data. Sure, you no longer have access to it, definitely, but most people seem to assume that it's not entirely gone.

RTBF ensures that companies whom you provided information to delete this information if asked to politely.

Or I'm a, 18 year old caught in a Romeo & Juliet, with my face plastered across Facebook as a "sex offender", but it's later overturned (or, as I call it, sanity prevailed). Should I have a right to be forgotten?

Or... the list of possibilities continues.

A real con artist can just fake someone's ID, for them it's pretty trivial.

The issue is less than 1% of convictions ever make it to the Internet, and those people currently will be stigmatized forever, unlike the other 99%, unless they have this mechanism. Google's plea was 'we will self police, but we won't tell you how. We will ignore court orders, because we choose to'. The court objected to that approach.

If you are convicted of new crimes, no matter how long ago, then your sentence may be significantly increased as a repeat offender.

So, employers don’t get access to criminal records, and generally, newspapers can’t republish information about people in a way that would harm their life today. Even criminals whose cases were public when they went into jail have a right to a normal life after they’ve finished their sentence – sometimes this is included with a change of name, but ideally, it’d be better if we, as society, would just forgive, or forget.

> solved more elegantly by creating anti-discrimination laws around criminal records

Such laws have a terrible record. What happens in reality is not that company says "screw it, we'll take a risk of hiring a criminal since we can't run a background check" but "we'll use next available statistical heuristic for being a criminal and if you have it we won't let you nowhere around 90% - we'd fail you much earlier and we'd build the process in a way that you can prove nothing". And if you're familiar with statistical heuristics they'd use - and note they're not trained statistician so they wouldn't go into such details as "bad sign for the whole population but good sign for this particular tiny subgroup", especially if they hire for a position where they have a large pool of candidates - you can imagine how discriminatory it would be in practice.

I feel it is basically a cultural issue. Many Europeans (including me) believe that the "right to be forgotten" is real, i.e. we want that right. Company with american cultural roots feels differently, so there's a clash. The main problem is that Google doesn't want to submit to our European culture; which is fine, they can fight in court.

We had that in Russia since 2016, and your guess how it works is exactly correct (e.g. see Skrynnik vs Yandex case).

What I don't understand though, is how this is supposed to help. If you want a fact to disappear, shouldn't you work that out with the publisher? Until you do that, it isn't really forgotten... just kind of badly remembered. I mean, people can still access that story as long as it's on the internet.

- the fact you were member of X and you done some comments gets a good Page Rank

- X becomes very unpopular, people that believed in X ideology are seen as idiots,racists,violent

- you got older and smarter and you realized your mistake

- you made some other good things during your life, like maybe won chess tournaments, volunteered,donated to charities,raise children

And the problem will be that your mistake will be on the top results on web search wile your good stuff will probably not be online or if it is will be on 3rd or 4rd web search page(the even where you won the chess competition has a bad page rank)

Many issues you can say are a society problem, like a murder, you can argue that the society is at fault for creating them, allowing guns, drogs, bad education.

So for this problem I think there should be some technical solution for affecting the page rank of some pages on Google or other searches in some conditions, and now we need to find some fair conditions when this should happen, maybe google could fix the algorithm to not give such a big page rank to this kind of stories in general.

Every conviction must be declared for a small number of years if asked. After that period it must only be declared if you're applying for a sensitive job (e.g. school teacher) and it resulted in a custodial sentence.

Former cons should be able to get a job, otherwise they'll just end up in jail again. If it's white collar crime then they could be just temporarily barred from that profession as part of the sentence.

That you can't get that question answered through Google is actually good. Just think about it: anybody can add content to Google, and making you look bad is as simple as making a page with a bunch of stuff about you that isn't actually true. And in the age of Google-without-checks that's how it works: a quick Google search has taken the place of a much more thorough background check for important positions and instead it is being applied to pizza delivery people as well.

The reocities project got a lot of mail over the years and a couple of the cases that stood out for me were people that had been targeted by individuals that had gone out of their way to make their lives much harder to the point of some of them thinking of ending their lives. And then there were all the childhood follies that people would rather have the internet forgets.

The 'right to be forgotten' is as much about being in control of the narrative about ourselves as anything else, and that there is some level of recourse here is good: the judge carefully weighed the evidence and decided in favor of the party that brought the suit, it could have gone the other way too.

It is also quite funny to me that on the one hand people argue that those who break the law and pay the price should then be forever haunted by this but at the same time hold corporations to a different standard by allowing them to break the law on an ongoing basis because it suits their purpose.

Seems to me that's an opportunity for regulatory capture: politically-connected companies end up permitted to check on potential employees, while upstarts and outcasts don't — giving an unfair advantage (assuming the hiring criminals is a disadvantage) to the well-connected firms.

I trust the European courts more than I trust American advertisers.

Okay, great, so Google's now required to judge right to be forgotten requests based on whether the criminal has "shown remorse." Yeah, that's not arbitrary or even a little impossible to do at scale.

Let's grant that there are good cases for removing pages from a search index. If this is going to be the rubric, we should let the courts figure it out, and then an order should be issued to search engines to remove the content. This thing where you tell each search engine to remove content, the search engines decide based on, I dunno, court precedent or gut feeling or whatever, then you sue, then you appeal, I just don't see how that can work.

Eventually Google will just start granting every single request regardless of merit because being challenged will get too expensive.

If the right to be forgotten is an important right that Eu courts want to enforce, they should actually enforce it. Not just tell google to get it right.

And if one put themsleves in the shoes of a victim, or even a criminal who has served their time, Google's pagerank is doing them a disservice.

I don't know if expunging records is the right thing to do, but it's worth discussing. There's no guarantee that searching a criminal's name will bring up the recent history where they've done their time, shown contrition, and is contributing to society. Instead it'll be the most highly cited -- likely news about their crime.

As a society, we approve of jail being the mechanism to "forgive" a person's crime. As such, isn't it horrible that Google's pagerank will only turn up what they've done wrong in the past? Again, I don't know if expunging the records is the right thing to do (in fact I believe it's wrong), but I do think it's worth debating.

That's not really true. Serving prison time is neither a way to "forgive" nor a way to "pay debt back to society". Those are just common phrases some people use.

If felons were truly forgiven, they would have their right to vote restored. They wouldn't be denied a passport to travel abroad or denied a firearms license. Convicted felons of financial crime will be denied officer positions such as CFO in public companies. A sex felony will be a lifetime of reporting on the sex offenders registries.

Society has never perceived jail time as truly resetting the scarlet letter back to zero. Therefore, the debate is whether "Google results" is in the same bucket as "sex offender list". For many in society, they think it's wrong to remove those results from Google.

I agree and I'm not debating the harm that can be done. (My comment got many downvotes so I assume they think I believe felons should never be given a 2nd chance.)

No, my comment is specifically about the framework for arguing. I'm saying that phrases such as "forgive" and "pay debt to society" are unconvincing since society has never universally believed that. Consider even the EU country like UK where Google lost this case. If UK truly "forgives" crimes after a felony sentence is served, why do they have a sex offender registry? The parent I responded to is apparently based in Canada. Canadian border officers have denied Americans with prior DUI felony convictions from entering the country. That's another example of not being "forgiven". Also, Canada is another country with a sex offender list.

If we want to debate the "harm" to felons, then let's debate that. Do not use "forgive" in the text of the argument because it just leads to an inconsistency. Jail time is about punishment, not forgiveness.

We have a Violent and Sex Offender Register: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_and_Sex_Offender_Regis...

It is not public, it exists to facilitate Police intelligence.

The "police intelligence" gives a misleading impression. Non-police residents can inquire about felons on the list because of Sarah's Law.[1]

In other words... "If I molested a child and served my 10 year prison sentence, I'm not truly _forgiven_ if people can check if I'm on a sex offender registry."

Therefore, don't use "forgive" as the framework. It should be clear that society really doesn't forgive and allow people a clean slate. If serving jail truly meant the "debt was paid to society", felons wouldn't be put on that list after jail was completed. Many defendents refuse a plea bargain of "guilty" because they don't want to be put on that list. To them, the lifetime sex offender list is worse than the jail sentence. It's an ongoing debt that's never repaid.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/find-out-if-a-person-has-a-recor...

> Many defendents refuse a plea bargain of "guilty" because they don't want to be put on that list.

This is not the US.

> Non-police residents can inquire about felons on the list because of Sarah's Law

This is no different than an extended check which any company allowing you to work with children can carry out. The difference is here that vulnerable new partners of the person can enquire if they see fit.

It is about keeping people safe, not punishing people. It's literally a criminal offence to reveal information about someone having to sign the register.

It seems like an inconsistent application of this principle. Sentences are often based on the amount of money involved. So while embezzlement by a CEO at a small company may well result in smaller losses and shorter prison sentences, the intent and conduct is exactly the same as a similar case at a larger company. If the smaller company CEO has a right to be forgotten, so does the larger one.

IMHO, this is an encouraging, nuanced development. There has to be a balance between protecting people against serial offenders and rehabilitation.

Responsible Journalism can’t ignore stuff like this, so I’m not surprised that the Judge would expect google, after making the journalism case, to demonstrate some of that attention to detail.

This is like a network where you can cause a network to waste a GB of data by sending a KB of data.

The only reasonable response in that situation would be to invest only the money available to fight the worst of the worst requests and blanket accept almost everyone's request to silence anyone else.

If you turn it around and make a single request take a few thousand dollars worth of legal fees and many hours of work then worthless requests which are likely to be denied wont be bothered with but the most worthy may still be seen to.

I mean, you're assuming two things:

- That people who want their data removed are criminals. That's hugely not the case. Does a teenager who was plastered all over social media / newspapers have to change his/her name because someone targeted abuse at him/her?

- Even if they were jailed for a transgression, they paid their part to the socienty. For serious transgressions, the authorities keeps tabs on them. For non-serious things, why does it matter? They paid their part.

> The man, who has not been named due to reporting restrictions surrounding the case, wanted search results about a past crime he had committed removed from the search engine.

Any example of somebody being abused/targeted and Google refusing to remove them from search results? The only cases where they fought back were people trying to hide their criminal record (most often politicians, white collar crime).

You need to convince a judge that you have a "good reason". France has only recently loosened its restrictions on what names people are allowed to have.

Story about German murderers suing to get their names removed from a Wikipedia article about the victim. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=0

Let me tell you a little thing called marijuana possession charges and how they make students ineligible for student aid and government loans/grants. Even getting charged with possession of a single joint is enough to bar a student from receiving aid or loans. Such charges or convictions are the reason employers turn people away all of the time.

That’s truly enough for employers.

A few years ago you had no such facility at all - how did you manage?

Now you have a right to dictate what will be in someone else's mind.

This is a very US-centric attitude and very undemocratic in my view.

In Germany, for example, people in jail are generally allowed to vote. They could even set up a voting booth inside the jail if there were demand. However, there usually isn't and inmates vote by mail.

In the last 25 years, only 80 people, who were found guilty of treason, have lost the right to vote.

However, people whose sentence is at least a year in jail are excluded from running for office for 5 years.

> Society has never perceived jail time as truly resetting the scarlet letter back to zero.

Some jobs here require a so-called "certificate of conduct" which you can get from the police and which lists criminal convictions. The entries in this certificate expire after a certain number of years, depending on the the crime. The maximum time a conviction can be in the record is 10 years after it has been served. Afterwards, it's deleted. (It is not deleted from police records but from what a company could find out in a background check by going through official channels.)

What were they doing? How many independent acts of treason was this?

The German federal statistics office publishes a report every year which lists how many people have lost their right to vote or to hold public office according to §45 (2) and (5) StGB (German criminal law) [1]. Unfortunately, the reports do not distinguish between these two cases. In any case, the numbers are vanishingly small in recent years. I looked at the last 12 years for which there is a report (2005 - 2016) and it's only 15 cases, so a little more than 1 per year. Again, it doesn't distinguish between losing the right to vote and losing the right to hold office.

The people who lost their rights according to this law were mostly convicted for crimes against the state, the public order, or misconduct in office. To make it more precise, the report lists crimes such as joining a terrorist organisation, obstruction of punishment, forcing a subordinate to commit a crime, criminal assault while in office, corruption, etc. The original newspaper article summarized them as crimes against the state which I translated as treason.

However, it seems that the law was applied more often in the past. I found a secondary source [2] which lists 178 cases between 1978 and 2008. The primary source [3] is a dissertation which costs 80 €.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/GPStatistik/receive/DESerie_serie_00..., § 5.1

[2] Sonja Bühler, Die Aberkennung des aktiven Wahlrechts von Strafgefangenen nach § 45 Abs. 5 StGB, Freilaw 1/2017, http://www.freilaw.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0...

[3] Jan Oelbermann, Wahlrecht und Strafe, Universität Bremen, 2011, http://www.nomos-shop.de/Oelbermann-Wahlrecht-Strafe/product...

This is a problem that should be fixed with laws, not with Google.

In many places, an 18 year old who sleeps with a 17 year old is a "rapist". Someone who breaks into a house and forces them at knifepoint to have sex is also a "rapist". One of these is a much greater danger to society and that should be reflected in our laws. And, to a certain extent, it is. Many places have judicial procedures where the first kind of "rapist" can have that offense reduced to a lesser class of crime after some level of incarceration and probation. Google should not be allowed to unilaterally undo that.

We need to quit treating people who go to prison as if they have a scarlet letter even after they have served their time. If they are that dangerous, they shouldn't be let out. The problem is that, in the US, we want to incarcerate people but not pay money for doing so.

I have always thought that was outrageous. I think people should be aloud to vote even while they're in jail. The current system could allow a group to wipe out their political opponents by simply passing a law outlawing a common activity, then selectively enforcing it. I mean that's basically what the war on drugs was about.

It's odd that the USA, which champions democracy, doesn't hold the right to vote as a universal and inalienable right of all citizens.

Wikipedia actually has an interesting map on the subject for the US (below the fold/ToC):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement

Unfortunately, some states (including the United Kindom) wilfully defy the ECtHR on this issue.

But I also don't think it's unreasonable to allow some prisoners to vote, especially where they are imprisoned for short sentences and where it is in the interests of rehabilitating them to do so.

It's not like stabbing someone makes your opinion on taxes less valid. Or drug dealing makes your opinion of the education system invalid.

Even if you rob someone, your opinion that the poor (a.k.a. probably you) should be financially supported by the government is not less valid.

There can a point be made that you're not exactly participating in society while you're in prison, so if we act like politics always perfectly reflect people's current needs and don't cumbersomely shape over decades, then you could argue that they shouldn't be allowed to vote over other people's society, therefore should only be allowed to vote when they're going to be released in the next legislature period. But that's just not the case. A moron in presidency can and will negatively affect people's lives for a long time after he's gone.

Lastly, I suppose, if you view prison primarily as punishment, then taking away their right to vote just extends that.

Nothing basic about it. The "War on Drugs", as we know it today, was literally started by the Nixon administration as a means to control liberals and minorities.[0]

0 - https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ (the money quote, by Ehrlichman, is in the second paragraph)

You should be made aware that none of those happen in most EU countries. Most people here feel that things done in the US like public sex offender registeries are abhorrent.

Now, should retribution be infinite? Is rehabilitation impossible? Should a criminal be permanently removed from society?

We generally answer no to these questions except in rare situations that are front-page news and enter popular vocabulary. That’s why Google is in the wrong here.

And they know it too - the only reason they want to do it is a few more ad clicks.

This doesn't happen in Europe. Part of the social contract over here is that criminals who have served their sentence have the right to have their fundamental rights restored. That in fact is the justification for punishment in the first place.

A society that takes on the authority to punish individuals must integrate these individuals after they have payed their debt to society. If they wouldn't the punishment would be arbitrary, cruel and serve no purpose.

    1.  Removal of social offender from society
    2.  Rehabilitation of non-conforming individuals
    3.  Punishment enough to deter future offenders

You can certainly justify discriminating against people with criminal records that way. It's by far the best predictor of job performance. High social trust is probably the most important aspect of a society. Letting known criminals get into positions of power is not an ideal way to achieve that.

The main reason we have prisons is justice. The basic human desire for fairness and consequences for wrongdoing. No one wants to see a murderer get away with it. Even if there is some compelling argument why punishment won't increase utility. For instance, people tend to strongly oppose having sentences done by statistical algorithms. That are vastly better at predicting recidivism than human judges. Because they feel unfair.

And that same desire for fairness is also why people prefer criminals get a second chance.

And you should get that - by making an official request for those records, and presenting documents that show that the person is applying to your job which involves supervising women and children.

None of which requires it to be at the distance of a click.

I, for one, don't think a murderer should be forgiven. A murderer gets to live, and the victim is no longer alive, there is fundamentally nothing you can do to be forgiven for murder. To me, that is as it should be.

I, on the other hand, would rather not get robbed because your draconian policies left the murderer alive but unable to get a job.

Sure. But let's make that list formal, with recognised judicial ways of getting on it, and recognised judicial ways of getting off it, rather than just "this newspaper said it", which leaves people without recourse unless they can afford lawyers.

That would make sense if you were never guilty of it, but I disagree completely with the idea that somebody who has been ruled guilty (without a successful appeal) has a right to be forgotten only for having served their time.

> For adults, the rehabilitation period is one year for community orders, two years for custodial sentences of six months or less, four years for custodial sentences of over six months and up to and including 30 months, and seven years for custodial sentences of over 30 months and up to and including 48 months. Custodial sentences of over four years will never become spent and must continue to be disclosed when necessary.

This has been part of UK law since at least 1974. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/53

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Ac...

Now Mark is out, looking for a job as a JavaScript developer but when Mark is Googled to check about his involvement in OS projects and personal portfolio before his Github profile the article on CNN from 5 years ago is displayed and apparently Mark is a cookie monster.

Is Mark sentenced to never be employed again? Mark made a mistake but Is He really worse from all these people who commit crimes and never get caught or end up in the news?

Maybe the balance could be to not display Marks convictions until specifically asked for?

I don't say that I have the answer but I really don't understand the concept of unforgiveness.

Maybe we should approach all this from a utilitarian perspective? What's the utility of labelling Mark as a thief years after he paid for what he did?

This is basically the status quo before. But ... the employer is going to background check mark and find them anyway, because they are public record and available in easily searchable databases (see Lexis, etc)

In practice, this stuff simply doesn't affect any employment case (at least in the US). None of the right to be forgotten stuff allows you to avoid any of the above except the "easy google search" (which again, practically doesn't matter).

So the argument you make should be limited to that. (and i think it is entirely reasonable to question whether your neighbors, who won't background check you, but will search google, should find it)

With the pre-Google system, at least Mark gets his foot in the door and has a chance to impress the prospective employer during the interview process. While his conviction may still impact his employment prospects, at least he has a fighting chance.

With Google in place, Mark never receives a call-back. The employer doesn't bother.

How much does this impact Mark in the real world? I have no idea. But, I'd prefer the non-Google system and avoid the potential of Mark never finding meaningful employment.

I'm pretty sure there are ssrn papers/etc on this, where they found that 99% of employers (or something ridiculous) had non-overridable policies, so in practice, no, there was no fighting chance.

I'd personally prefer a system where neither could be used after a cooling off period depending on crime.

Would the companies start asking in their screening process "Have you been committed of crime before" and that would wash out all the benefits of censoring Google?

Are they? I've been involved in hiring people, and I've never seen that. Is it common in the EU?

You search For Mark Javascript, you are greeted with "You won't believe what Mark, a JavaScript Developer, did to steal cookies" headlines. A lot of the News is for-profit entertainment, it's not public record of Mark but public record of entertainment. The same "News" source might have omitted the news about Oliver the Cookie monster because he advertises a lot with them and they don't want to lose his business.

Maybe it's simply not his potential employers job to forgive Mark. The employer is put in such a position because he's exposed to information that's not his business in first place.

Or maybe Mark shouldn't be anywhere near cookies anymore - unless he's shown he's been rehabilitated.

Mark paid his debt to society by time served. And if you want to not hire ex convicts, you simply ask for his criminal record. Is that not a possibility in the US?

Anyhow, Google giving you tabloids or other crap simply cannot be a reliable criminal record.

And note we’re talking of somebody that’s actually proven guilty in a court of law. What about people being the target of scandals that aren’t guilty of anything?

After the background check is completed, he may have already gone through your full interview loop, and impressed everyone, and you may just decide that you want to hire him anyway.

In a different world, you would have rejected him outright, without giving him a chance to prove himself.

I think this matters a lot.

That doesn't mean that Mark doesn't deserve a second chance at life. But it does mean that, for the first while at least, you are ill-advised to give him the keys to the room where the cookies are kept.

For his entire life? Even if he was a teenager or young? Doesn't american society even consider something as simple as possibility of changing your behaviour in 60+ years of life?

I mean... half of my most successful highschoolmates, leading great companies and organizations, would be untrustworthy and unemployable by American logic since they smoked a bit of pot and got caught for it.

With the current US system those both things will punish you for the whole life, even if you grow out of it. Even if its petty theft. Or large theft. Or a bit of pot. Or selling pot. Social media and background checks will damage your future prospects forever for a minor thing that doesn't make a difference in other societies.

Same thing and op's point of view and yours

You say you disagree, but even the parent suggests as much: "But it does mean that, for the first while at least,"

That's what I take their meaning as. That after you commit a crime, you have to prove yourself again, and that takes time. It's why you suggest 30s, and not 18. For a while after their crime, it would make sense to exclude someone.

On top of that, why so late? Why are you forcing your view that 30s is the earliest someone can trust someone again? Why not 18? Why can't a citizen decide to trust someone earlier than some arbitrary number?

You are confused about what the word "axiomatically" means. If this is an axiom, your system is easily proved inconsistent with reality. Person A is known to have stolen a cookie from the cookie jar when she was three. Person B, who has never stolen a cookie, brandishes a weapon and says "I intend to steal your cookies, so choose: your cookies or your life." Under your axioms, every person must trust person B more than person A with respect to whether they will steal your cookies.

Your argument is probabilistic, not axiomatic. There's a huge difference.

Not at all the same thing. Actions have consequences, and we can't force companies to hire people they see as unsafe.

[1] https://www.archives.gov/eeo/terminology.html

"Protected Class: The groups protected from the employment discrimination by law. These groups include men and women on the basis of sex; any group which shares a common race, religion, color, or national origin; people over 40; and people with physical or mental handicaps. Every U.S. citizen is a member of some protected class, and is entitled to the benefits of EEO law. However, the EEO laws were passed to correct a history of unfavorable treatment of women and minority group members."

Additionally selected enforcement of laws has turned criminal convictions into a way to get rid of a statistically higher rate of minorities without saying that's why you are doing it. If I recall correctly that is the main reason that Massachusetts banned asking for criminal history on applications

Where do you think this protected class came from?

That doesn't mean we have to provide them with the means to do it. No public information, no option to see someone unsafe because of that information.

The argument seems to be that because society does pass that sentence already, we who disagree should "fix" it by making sure society doesn't learn that Mark is a cookie monster.

Does that not sound backwards? If the answer to your question is really "no", then we wouldn't need to have this discussion.

I suppose I can see the argument that things are unfair to Mark because other people got away with stealing cookies without having it on the public record.

News doesn’t cover all the criminals even if they are convicted. For the most part, It’s an entertainment and the editorial process can make Mark unemployable because his crime brought a lot of ad impressions but the wife beater never ended up on the news because wasn’t shocking or interesting enough.

Him getting a job is good for society, but I don't want to be the one shouldering the risk.

For the individual it's a high risk / low reward situation, so the rational decision is to pass.

Tragedy of the commons.

Not all crimes are reported on the News as it's for-profit entertainment business that needs to pick the most shocking/entertaining incidents and portray those in a way that more people share it.

The probability of a convicted person to do something criminal again is not the same as the risk of an random unconvicted person, just like the risk of a flood reoccurring in a previously flooded area:

> According to an April 2011 report by the Pew Center on the States, the average national recidivism rate for released prisoners is 43%.[2]

> According to the National Institute of Justice, about 68 percent of 405,000 prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years of their release from prison, and 77 percent were arrested within five years.

> According to a national study published in 2003 by The Urban Institute, within three years almost 7 out of 10 released males will be rearrested and half will be back in prison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism

An unemployed and bitter wife-beater is a much greater risk of continuing beating his wife (and possibly kids) compared to a wife-beater who is employed. Also, and it pains me to say this, there is a really low correlation between wife-beaters and professional performance, and in today's world where most everything is oriented on results that matters. Case in point: John Lennon was a wife-better but he was also a very good singer and song-writer, so people focused more on his music talents than on his wife-kicking abilities. And his case is not the only one. Not saying that it was the right thing to ignore his private life when judging him, just mentioning the facts.

Even if you claim that you can judge one's character by a mistake He/She did in the past, news organizations are not always accurate or might not portray the picture factually.

Maybe it's better if you ask Mark for past convictions and give him a chance to explain so you can judge his character in an informed way.

This is not Google's fault and they should not be the one's being punished. If a government wants to have a say here they can, but in general society will act on information and you can't hide it from them.

I hope you're doing well and I'm glad that you're not repeating your mistake.

Mark needs to be given the opportunity to demonstrate to an employer hes no longer a cookie monster. He needs to rebuild that trust.

He would do this by taking a lower than average pay, agreeing to periodic cookie-tests, and giving the employer the option to terminate his employment at any time without cause.

If mark really isn't a cookie monster anymore he should be fine with this precautions to minimize the company's risk - after a year or so when there is more trust these disappear.

> Why would they hire mark over a similar employee with a clean record?

Is it useful to have people with a history of low level crime habitually unemployable. Don't we want to reduce crime.

> Mark needs to be given the opportunity to demonstrate to an employer hes no longer a cookie monster.

Mark is innocent of further crimes until he is convicted and the employer would need to have reasonable cause to discriminate against him. We have parole and other such mechanisms where official bodies can decide how long a person needs to speed demonstrating they are no longer a criminal, and make sure the relevant people are aware of this. Why leave it up to some random employer armed with google.

> He would do this by taking a lower than average pay,

Why does he deserve lower pay. This is just enabling employers to take advantage of vulnerable people.

> and giving the employer the option to terminate his employment at any time without cause.

The employer has the right to terminate at any time for mark committing a criminal act. He doesn't need this. Plus this is europe and workers have rights

You are essentially complaining about human nature. Here in reality people want to know if you've violated someone else's trust before trusting you. We are social beings and if you present two people - "This one betrayed a friend, this other one has not" - 99% of people will choose the later.

You will never ever convince a majority of people that someone who has demonstrated untrustability should be trusted the same as someone who has not. Regardless of how long he spent in a steel and concrete cage.

There are also fair ways to deal with criminals, and staff you may not trust. Using google results as the bases of randomly deducting pay, removing employment rights, and other discriminatory acts, is not one of these. It would be far too easy for employers to abuse and doesn't lend itself to the employee having stability. This would just increase the chances of the employee returning to crime.

Give yourself a scenario - you have two equal candidates:

a) background check clean, no google results b) background check lists sealed conviction, no google results

you'll choose?

now another:

a) background check clean, no google results b) background check lists sealed conviction, google results says he stole some cookies

you'll choose?

Probably (a) both times. Unless in scenario B you can ask about his previous cookie conviction and pay him less and/or able to fire at any time.

By denying all potential information you sow distrust between a mutually consensual relationship. Do you think more or less convicts will be hired when you can't trust background checks to get all the relevant information.

In such a world gossip will replace google. "Did you hear about mark? Oh don't hire him I heard he murdered someone over a batch of cookies!"