
US diplomat: If EU allows 'right to be forgotten' …it might spark TRADE WAR - iProject
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/05/right_to_be_forgotten/
======
patrickg
Many companies will go bankrupt if X will happen. X=(tape recording, internet,
ATMs, privacy laws, any kind of regulation).

I can't really hear this argument any more. Sure, any regulation will have bad
side effects, but who are we? A planet full of people or a planet of companies
that want to maximize profit on our back? The world will not end if we are
allowed some more privacy for us.

~~~
jnorthrop
Think about what the "Right to be forgotten" means at a technical level. It
means you need to permanently delete records from your databases -- not just
mark them with a deleted flag as well as delete records from your backups and
reports generated that may contain personal information. In addition your
organization may also be held responsible for removal of data given to third
parties.

This is a big deal and it has many concerned over how it can be implemented as
well as enforced.

~~~
alexro
This means that the companies will not collect and maintain too much data
about me to start with. There can be a reasonable amount of data - like name,
DOB, address - that can stay public in any case. Other data will have to be
deleted.

~~~
patrickg
Any kind of personal data must stay privat unless I decide that can be
revealed/public. Name, DOB, and address are personal data. I must have the
right to prevent companies giving my address away (public or other companies).

~~~
alexro
That'd be the ideal scenario I suppose.

------
tomelders
Europe is the largest economy in the world. If there is any merit to this
article, then I wish the US luck, but I think they'll get a very short shrift.
The EU has too many internal problems to bother pussy footing around with the
US. It's a sleeping giant and I get the feeling it's about ready to start
putting it's foot down, purely to save itself.

~~~
eqreqeq
Europe is a bunch of countries. I'm sure we can arbitrarily choose any other
group of countries that will make it a bigger economy than Europe. So saying
that Europe is the largest economy in the world is kind of silly. Largest to
what? To other continents?

~~~
namdnay
By "Europe", the parent means the E.U. The fact that is has a parliament, a
supreme court, a set of laws and a unified trade policy means that it can (in
some situations, such as this one) be compared with other federations of
states. Such as... the USA!

------
killerpopiller
it always bothers me if US-officials threatening to take counter measures when
countries strengthen civil rights.

His point is, private data is big business and the US gov needs data to grind.
We, the US won't let your liberal boundaries interfere with that.

Well, in Germany one has the "Grundrecht", the fundamental right to stay in
charge of ones own data.

There are of course many problems in daily life and our data privacy laws
sometimes hitting those practical limitations.

Nevertheless, enclosure movement was key in the rise of the US and it remains
that way. Strong arming weaker forces out of their turfs and making profits.
That is the american way, not ours.

This enclosure movement of private data means "web 2.0 the capitalistic way".
We take your data, profiting and you are not. Here, have some booze and
blankets.

~~~
varjag
> Nevertheless, enclosure movement was key in the rise of the US and it
> remains that way.

I always thought enclosure was a British thing..

~~~
killerpopiller
enclosure movement in the sense I and e.g. Volker Grassmuck
([http://waste.informatik.hu-
berlin.de/grassmuck/Texts/spinner...](http://waste.informatik.hu-
berlin.de/grassmuck/Texts/spinner-wissenskomm.html)) used, means
taking/claiming common land by putting a fence around it.

Thats how the wild west worked basicly. The natives haven't had the concept of
property.

And we don't see our own private data as "our property" as well - which pages
we use, which products we buy, which X we like, where we work, adresses and so
on.

It isn't property, it is us and we should be able to decide what others do
with those expressions. If companies earn money with it, we should profit from
it as well. Don't you think.

Google profits from that and in exchange we can use their services. Often we
do know that we are the product.

Having certain informations at certain online service deleted might just spawn
new startups offering to do just that for your customers and your convenience.

Gaining the trust of customers is a good thing imho.

~~~
varjag
Well yes, enclosure/fencing was very very British thing. I was just surprised
that someone referred to it as the American way.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure>

What happened in America was very ugly colonization, but arguably not the same
thing.

------
kriro
It's sad that a law like this is needed at all. It seems like a matter of
common decency to remove data about someone upon request.

People that are willing to fight a trade war (whatever that is supposed to
mean) over this are so far removed in their worldview from my own that it's
actually quite shocking.

While we're at it I'd really appreciate if my bank data wouldn't be shipped
off to the US. Pricacy terrorists at work over there.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Sure, it's common decency to be reasonable and delete data if requested. But
this law seems to go a bit too far and make things a bit too difficult.

According to the linked article, the person you're requesting to remove the
data is also liable for any third parties that have it - and should take
reasonable steps to ensure they remove it. Can you imagine the logistics of
Twitter removing every reference to all tweets by xyz in a timely fashion? How
about Google removing data from their search engine and making sure any number
of aggregators etc also remove it? How can a company even know what's being
done with public data? The law says personal data - there's certainly people
sharing personal data publicly, making this effectively impossible to enforce.

The EU are right to be thinking about how to apply their privacy directive to
the internet age - the current situation isn't working. However, they need to
be a bit sensible here and realise that when data has been made public with a
person's permission (eg Tweeted), it's that person's responsibility, not eg
Twitter's.

EDIT: That's not even considering backups etc - we expect these services to
work, so it's reasonable to expect and permit them to make backups. If I want
to be forgotten with a reasonable degree of confidence, I'd need them to
delete information about me from all their backups too. Maybe your average
Wordpress blog doesn't have a nightly backup, but if it's picked up by a tech
site/Reddit/HN, you can be sure they do - so I'd want it deleted from all of
their backups too.

An unenforceable law that claims that people have more protection than is
technically reasonably possible is not an improvement in my opinion - people
should know what's happening with their data, and shifting whose
lying/misleading from companies to Government is not an improvement.

------
arethuza
This sounds like some comment by a junior official being blown _way_ out of
proportion.

The EU and the US squabble all the time about trade - it would be pretty
surprising if they didn't!

e.g. Consider the long running argument over Boeing and Airbus.

~~~
Shivetya
still his remark about us having a right to privacy but not a fundamental
right to data protection just plain irks me.

Its typical weasel words from government officials who seem to find no method
unreasonable if it lets them circumvent the intent of the Constitution. They
love to forget it was a document which limited the government, not us.

~~~
arethuza
It wouldn't surprise me if they set up some relatively junior diplomat to make
statements like this to test the water and to allow deniability if it all goes
too wrong.

------
flexie
Anyways, a "right to be forgotten" sounds like a nice idea, doesn't it?

~~~
adaml_623
As a web developer for a smallish company with detailed customer records I'm
happy to add this as a feature.

I'm not sure what to do about my backups but hopefully common sense will
prevail on that front.

I'm also curious about industries that need to retain all financial
transaction records for a certain amount of time. They are going to have to be
exempt from this as well.

~~~
kriro
Not just industries.

"Dear European country X, would you kindly remove all my personal data from
your databases" is probably not something they want.

Guess an opt out app for the tax database would be an all time bestseller
though :P

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kintamanimatt
Why would such a privacy provision spark a trade war? Is the US going to
increase import tariffs because the EU legislates stronger privacy
protections? This makes zero sense to me.

~~~
rmc
They are talking the talk. They (the US) is unlikely to actually walk the
walk.

------
nextparadigms
I don't like this trend of US sparking trade wars everywhere. In the end it's
a lose-lose outcome, for both parties. Do they really not want companies to do
business in Europe over this?

I think it's just an empty threat. And I really hope EU doesn't cave in to
their demands. They've done it plenty of times already, and I don't remember
hearing much about "US caving to EU demands".

------
jakub_g
Side rant: first 5 paragraphs of the article are nearly the same each (yeah, I
know, it's a title, a lead, and 3 paras to be precise). This, plus "TRADE WAR"
in capitals in the title, made me feel like on some cheap tabloid site.

~~~
morsch
El Reg _is_ a cheap tabloid site.

~~~
merlish
Indeed, and they're distinctly aware of it, in their tongue-in-cheek way.
Check out their price list!
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/01/22/register_tariff/>

It would be nice if they had a full-time web designer or two on staff, though.
Site's a bit horrible.

------
jezfromfuture
its fine we will stop doing business with the usa. it won't hurt us as much as
it will hurt them.

------
lifeisstillgood
I firmly believe we need regulation to

a) allow us to know who has obtained / stored individually identifiable
information about us (presumably the storing party is opbliged to publically
record who they have identifed and when where how - a cottage industry of
letting us know will grow up)

b) allow us to block such recording - that is if we blacklist ourselves (right
to be forgotten) then you cannot publish our details but must notify us at a
contact point (ie email) and adhere to some wipe-orders.

c) this does not apply to warrented-supervised surveillance. But applies to
governments et al.

This is not quite what the EU is proposing (there seems to be no "workability"
to the proposals) but it is close.

In the end, technology has transformed a basic assumption about life - that we
can only be identified by people within eyeshot. Now that has gone completely,
and we need to rethink what we mean and expect from privacy.

As it has been said, secrecy is what other people don't know, privacy is what
they politely ignore. We need to make sure companies are polite.

------
danso
From the OP: _Under the draft Regulation individuals would enjoy a qualified
'right to be forgotten'. That right would enable them to force organisations
to delete personal data stored about them "without delay". Organisations that
have made the data public would be liable for the data published by third
parties and would be required to "take all reasonable steps, including
technical measures" to inform those groups to delete the information._

Talk about a blow to the First Amendment. Let's give it the benefit of the
doubt and say that this law doesn't force news sites to remove old stories
from the web that identify people.

According to the OP's interpretation, if someone uses Twitter to tweet
something racist/sexist/utterly despicable and then deletes it after getting
called out on it, that person could sue Twitter ten years later if I happened
to reply and quote that Tweet? Or if I referenced it in a blog post? And
Twitter would be expected to take any technical means necessary to silence me?

How is this law not the SOPA of information?

~~~
noahc
Doesn't _Organisations would be able to oppose the deletion of information if
they could show they have a right to publish the data under the fundamental
principle of freedom of expression or if it is in the public interest for the
data to remain in existence._ take care of it?

It wouldn't be hard to argue that that tweet serves the public interest by
allowing the sunlight to shine on it in public.

Obviously this is a Register article so it's light on details, but it seems to
me that this is targeted at organizations and you send them a message that
says, "delete everything about me" ie a collection of data, not "delete this
one thing about me" ie a member of data. How that is codified into law is
unclear.

~~~
danso
So this is where you and I disagree. You are seeing this as "well, ideally,
the law would be seen this way" and I'm thinking, "well, this is how lawyers
will try to interpret the law to bring litigation forward"

We aren't ideologically opposed, we have different pragmatic expectations.

------
acd
We should not go to war between EU and US, no matter what kind of war it is,
even if it’s just a trade war. This mess is caused by the banks. Its history
repeating itself all over again, in the 1920's there was a huge stock market
boom funded by cheap credit from the banks, then the stock market crashed we
got the great depression and Europe and US went to war against Hitler. Now
1990-2013 we have had cheap credit from the banks causing a housing boom, when
it imploded the central planning central banks intervened creating new money
saving the bankers. First the imploding house market will cause joblessness
because there is less profits from housing speculation to consume for secondly
the new money that the central banks give to the private banks will later
cause high inflation as more money are chasing the same amount of goods. This
high inflation will cause tensions high food and fuel prices, there will be
joblessness but the fault is the banks. What we have had now is bank
socialism, bailing out of the rich.

Same thing happening again as in the 1920s, but now it’s the Middle East. Same
cause, different players. Lets not repeat old mistakes.

~~~
timthorn
How is a disagreement about data protection principles anything to do with the
banks?

