This made me pause. It seems to me that if something is not meant to inform decision making, then why does a record of it need to persist?

That's up to the person for the particular role. Imagine hiring a nanny and some bureaucrat telling you what prior arrest is "relevant". No thanks. I'll make that call myself.

At some point, personal information becomes history, and we stop caring about protecting the owner's privacy. The only thing we can disagree on is how long that takes.

The UK does not have a statute of limitations

I'd go further and say a lot of charges and convictions shouldn't be a matter of public record that everyone can look up in the first place, at least not with a trivial index. File the court judgement and other documentation under a case number, ban reindexing by third parties (AI scrapers, "background check" services) entirely. That way, anyone interested can still go and review court judgements for glaring issues, but a "pissed on a patrol car" conviction won't hinder that person's employment perspectives forever.

In Germany for example, we have something called the Führungszeugnis - a certificate by the government showing that you haven't been convicted of a crime that warranted more than three months of imprisonment or the equivalent in monthly earning as a financial fine. Most employers don't even request that, only employers in security-sensitive environments, public service or anything to do with children (the latter get a certificate also including a bunch of sex pest crimes in the query).

Blocking (or more accurately: restricting) access works pretty well for many other things that we know will be used in ways that are harmful. Historically, just having to go in person to a court house and request to view records was enough to keep most people from abusing the public information they had. It's perfectly valid to say that we want information accessible, but not accessible over the internet or in AI datasets. What do you think the "right way" to deal with the problem is because we already know that "hope that people choose to be better/smarter/more respectful" isn't going work.

That's an assertion, but what's your reasoning?

> This would be a perfect example of something which should be made open after a delay. If the information is expunged before the delay, there's nothing to make open.

All across the EU, that information would be available immediately to journalists under exemptions for the Processing of Personal Data Solely for Journalistic Purposes, but would be simultaneously unlawful for any AI company to process for any other purposes (unless they had another legal basis like a Government contract).

Then there's cases like Japan, where not only companies, but also landlords, will make people answer a question like: "have you ever been part of an anti-social organization or committed a crime?" If you don't answer truthfully, that is a legal reason to reject you. If you answer truthfully, then you will never get a job (or housing) again.

Of course, there is a whole world outside of the United States and Japan. But these are the two countries I have experience dealing with.

Absolutely not. I'm not saying every crime should disqualify you from every job but convictions are really a government officialized account of your behavior. Knowing a person has trouble controlling their impulses leading to aggrevated assault or something very much tells you they won't be good for certain roles. As a business you are liable for what your employees do it's in both your interests and your customers interests not to create dangerous situations.

However, there's also jobs which legally require enhanced vetting checks.

Exactly. One option is for the person themselves to be able to ask for a LIMITED copy of their criminal history, which is otherwise kept private, but no one else.

This way it remains private, the HR cannot force the applicant to provide a detailed copy of their criminal history and discriminate based on it, they can only get a generic document from the court via Mr Doe that says, "Mr Doe is currently eligible to be employed as a financial advisor" or "Mr Doe is currently ineligible to be employed as a school teacher".

Ideally it should also be encrypted by the company's public key and then digitally signed by the court. This way, if it gets leaked, there's no way to prove its authenticity to a third party without at least outing the company as the source.

And only released if it's in the public interest. I'd be very very strict here.

I'm a bit weird here though. I basically think the criminal justice system is very harsh.

Except when it comes to driving. With driving, at least in America, our laws are a joke. You can have multiple at fault accidents and keep your license.

DUI, keep your license.

Run into someone because watching Football is more important than operating a giant vehicle, whatever you might get a ticket.

I'd be quick to strip licenses over accidents and if you drive without a license and hit someone it's mandatory jail time. No exceptions.

By far the most dangerous thing in most American cities is driving. One clown on fan duel while he should be focusing on driving can instantly ruin dozens of lives.

But we treat driving as this sacred right. Why are car immobilizers even a thing?

No, you can not safely operate a vehicle. Go buy a bike.

If a conviction is something minor enough that might be expungable, it should be private until that time comes. If the convicted person hasn't met the conditions for expungement, make it part of the public record, otherwise delete all history of it.

Good luck proving it when it happens. We haven't even managed to stop discrimination based on race and religion, and that problem has only gotten worse as HR departments started using AI which conveniently acts as a shield to protect them.

Why are we protecting criminals, just because they are minors? Protect victims, not criminals.

Unfortunately reputational damage is part of the punishment (I have a criminal record), but maybe it's moronic to create a class of people who can avoid meaningful punishment for crimes?

Yes

I’d then ask OpenAI to be open too since open is open.

I could have my mind changed if the public policy is that any public data ingested into an AI system makes that AI system permanently free to use at any degree of load. If a company thinks that they should be able to put any load they want on public services for free, they should be willing to provide public services at any load for free.

Family law is just the most obvious and unarguable example.

"We hired a specialist firm to build, in a secure sandbox, a safety tool for journalists. They are experts in building privacy-preserving AI solutions - for people like law firms or anyone deeply concerned with how data is held, processed, and protected. That’s why we chose them. Their founders are not only respected academics in addition to being professionals, they have passed government security clearance and DBS checks in the past, and have worked on data systems for the National Archives, the Treasury, and other public agencies. They’ve published academic papers on data compliance for machine learning.

"The Minister says we ‘shared data with an AI company”... as if we were pouring this critically sensitive information into OpenAI or some evil aggregator of data. This is simply ridiculous when you look at what we do and how we did it.

"We didn’t “share” data with them. We hired them as our technical contractor to build a secure sandbox to test an idea, like any company using a cloud provider or an email service. They worked under a formal sub-processor agreement, which means under data protection law they’re not even classified as a “third party.” That’s not our interpretation. It’s the legal definition in the UK GDPR itself. ... "And “for commercial purposes”? The opposite is true. We paid them £45,000 a year. They didn’t pay us a penny. The money flowed from us to them. They were prohibited, in writing, from selling, sharing, licensing, or doing anything at all with the data other than providing the service we hired them for.. and they operated under our supervision at all times. They didn’t care what was in the data - we reviewed, with journalists, the outputs to make sure it worked."

If this is true, it does seem that the government has mischaracterized what happened.

Prosecution of sexual assault is often handled extremely badly. It needs to be done better, without fear or favor, including people who are friends with the police or in positions of power. As we're seeing the fallout of the Epstein files.

Traced what? Innuendo is not a substitute for information.