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Comment by toomanybeersies | Hacker News Reader

So a convicted criminal should be eternally punished by losing any employment security and being paid less than their peers?

That doesn't sound like a society I would like to live in.

The other alternative is that these restrictions would begin with convicted criminals, and spread to the rest of the population. Just because someone hasn't been convicted doesn't mean they aren't a criminal with drugs and weapons in their house after all.

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How do you handle someone like this guy after he gets out of prison: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/our-tim... If we erase his past from the internet - that kind of enables him to do his scam again immediately. It's a difficult question.

> It's a difficult question.

Not at all. It's up to the legal system and law enforcement to handle this. Not up to citizens, and for good reasons.

And if Google only had to remove links due to a court order, that would be a lot more fair then the current self-censorship regime.

OK, to clarify, I wasn't arguing about whether legal system or citizens should decide but about when people have committed crimes, how much of that history should remain public and for how long is a difficult question for anybody - to balance the public safety and the need to reintegrate someone back into society. The latter because we can't just keep putting people in jail which is the current USA method based on prison overcrowding that we have in the USA, Western European countries have much lighter sentences but the recidivism rates would be interesting to compare.

> law enforcement

At least in my country, law enforcement has no obligation to handle anything. Legal systems punish criminals after-the-fact, it's up to individuals to prevent crimes. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule...

Think you missed the part where I said these restrictions were temporary until trust is rebuilt.

I have more of a reason to trust a stranger with a clean record than I do to trust a convicted criminal. Once the later demonstrates hes trustworthy these restrictions disappear.

In both politics and tech there has been nothing more permanent than a temporary measure. Jail was already supposed to be a temporary punishment for a crime that has been turning into a permanent punishment. How would your system not devolve into the same thing?

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