Page 130 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

118 PRIVACY IN A CYBER AGE

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request of a Kansas doctor with a history of malpractice suits. Thanks to
the rise of the Internet, the public has some chance, through a web search
or through a detailed search of state licensing board websites, of uncover-
ing information that has leaked into the public sphere, but the lack of a
more reliable or accessible option gives some poorly performing doctors
their own right to be forgotten—to the detriment of the public.
Beyond the fact that Internet databases do little harm to those who are
not likely to reform themselves, the widespread dissemination of informa-
tion about wrongdoers has real benefits for potential victims. Hospitals
hire few doctors these days without first checking them through digitized
data sources. Before you hire an accountant, such data makes it possible to
discover whether he or she has a record of embezzlement. A community
can find out if a new school nurse is a sex offender. Employers may direct
ex-offenders to other jobs, or they may still hire them but provide extra
oversight, or just decide that they are willing to take the risk. But they do
so well-informed—and thus warned—rather than ignorant of the sad facts.
Registration and notification laws for sex offenders provide a good
case in point. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy conducted
a study in 2005 that evaluated the effectiveness of the state’s community
notification laws. In 1990, Washington passed the Community Protection
Act, a law that requires sex offenders to register with their county sheriff
and authorizes law enforcement to release information to the public. The
study found that by 1999 the recidivism rate among felony sex offenders
in the state had dropped 70 percent from its pre-1990 level, in part due
to communities’ awareness of the sex offenders in their neighborhoods.
In addition, offenders subject to community notification were arrested for
new crimes much more quickly than offenders who were released without
notification.
The advocates for second chances and an opportunity to start anew
without being dogged by one’s record tend to call for a generic right. That
is, they favor the same basic right for killers and political extremists, rapists
and those who were merely arrested but not convicted. This is the case for
both normative and practical reasons. Normatively, there is a moral case
to be made for giving everyone a chance to redeem themselves. A practical
reason is that when information only existed on paper, as most of it did
until 1980 or so, information about all these different categories of people
was difficult to access and distribute. However, such a generic right to be
forgotten fails the liberal communitarian test, because it causes a great deal
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of harm to the common good and only limited benefit to personal good.
A person truly out to redeem himself had best start by acknowledging his
wrongdoing, expressing true remorse, making amends, and showing that
he has restructured his life, not by attempting to erase his past. 16