Lawyers have warned that the government’s decision to allow the deletion of court judgments from an online database in the absence of a proper set of rules was a very dangerous one.
The Malta IT Law Association expressed its deep concern in a statement issued on Friday, in which it reacted to the decision to allow individuals to request that court cases decided against them be removed from a database.
Justice Minister Owen Bonnici justified the move on the grounds that it was in line with the ‘right to be forgotten’.
Subsequently, he reportedly expressed his disappointment that when he had called for a debate three years ago, his appeal had fallen on deaf ears.
However, in its reaction the association pointed out that it was the minister himself who had ignored their request for a meeting specifically on the right to be forgotten which they sent by email in November 2015.
As for the merits of the controversy itself, the IT lawyers said that removal of personal data from an online service administered by the government containing public records, especially court judgments, could not be compared to de-listing entries from an online search engine.
While noting that this was not an absolute right, the association said that one needed to consider other issues like public interest, the nature of the data in question and the importance of the material being deleted.
From a legal perspective, the association said that the right to be forgotten addressed four basic principles: transparency, justifiability, proportionality and necessity.
On the issue of transparency they remarked that the approach adopted by the government was “clearly flawed”, as there was no rule, policy or procedure regulating one’s right to request the deletion of a judgment from the online database.
Secondly, the IT lawyers said under the existing set-up individuals may be acquiesced to even if their request has no legal basis.
Read: Chamber of Advocates 'disturbed' by judiciary's statement
“It may simply be granted in order to pander to private persons’ disproportionate expectation of their rights, while creating a precedent for further unjustified requests,” the lawyers’ statement read.
They noted that the only exceptions were on issues relating to the privacy of minors and national security, which warrant exclusion from the database.
Furthermore, the association questioned the argument made by the government that the judgments had been deleted because they caused distress to the subjects, saying that such a consideration could be always cited, albeit to varying degrees.
As for the necessity of the right to erasure, lawyers warned that this should not be used as a type of “blank cheque” to rewrite one’s personal history.
If that were to happen, heinous crimes would be deleted from the record simply because it was not fair for a person’s criminal history to follow them for the rest of their lives, the lawyers said.
The association called for a debate on the introduction of laws to rehabilitate offenders and the impact on the right to be forgotten. It is only through a proper balance between this right and the relation to the public interest that limiting access to the online court judgments database could be reconciled, it said.