Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1433519
NEWS 7 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 1 DECEMBER 2021 MATTHEW VELLA MALTA'S director-general of law courts has been granted unfettered authority to erase court judgements from a pub- lic government website, with- out any specific criteria laid down at law. Despite no 'right to forget' law being implemented in Malta, the justice ministry issued a le- gal notice that formally grants the CEO of the Court Services Agency to "determine whether a person has valid grounds to exercise the right of erasure of personal data in respect of the content of a court judgment published online." The right of erasure of per- sonal data from a court judg- mement shall be given effect either by anonymising the judgment or any part thereof, or by removing the judgment from the website entirely. The courts director now has the discretion in deciding up- on an application for the ex- ercise of the right of erasure of personal data from a court judgment published on the website of the Court Services Agency. MaltaToday has previously protested personally with this pratice with both the former director-general of the courts, and the former minister for justice. The 'Right to be Forgotten' was enshrined in EU law in 2014. If requested, this law dictates that search engines and other directories (such as court judgements) must delete any links to information on an individual, as long as it is 'inac- curate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive.' This 'delisting' prevents material from being found through search engines like Google. Dangerous precedent Critics of the 'right' include human resources firm Kon- nekt's CEO Josef Said: "The price paid is the erosion of col- lective memory. It is generally in the common interest for in- formation to be freely availa- ble. While some people might find their lives blighted by un- fair online distortion, many of those who request to be forgot- ten have something nefarious to hide. I believe that I should be able to search for, and find fraudsters, crooked business people and criminals." In 2018, MaltaToday ob- tained a list of 22 judgements removed from the online courts system in a freedom of information request. Ever since a warranted lawyer had a conditional discharge re- moved from the online courts system, it was revealed that former minister Owen Bonnici had granted the courts director discretion on requests for the removal of judgements. The two students, Yanica Bar- bara, 28 of Attard, and Thomas Sant, 30 of Qormi, were given conditional discharges in late 2009 and mid-2010 respective- ly after being found guilty of theft a few years back. The Association of Judges and Magistrates said the two stu- dents had been "conditionally discharged and, at law, such a decision is not a conviction", which means the charge does not get included in a criminal record in Malta, and nothing prevents the two graduates from being granted a warrant to practise law. Barbara's 2010 sentence was removed after the court's DG accepted her request to strike off the judgement from the da- tabase. The Malta IT Law Associa- tion has previously said that the removal of personal data from an online service admin- istered by the government and which contains public records, especially court judgments, cannot be simply compared to de-listing from a search engine. "Additionally, the right to be forgotten is not an absolute right – data controllers such as the court's director should take into consideration wheth- er the public interest is served by deletion or not, and the im- portance of the personal data being erased," lawyer Antonio Ghio had told MaltaToday. "The application of public in- terest considerations restrict- ing the right to be forgotten is stronger when the request for erasure of public data is not be- ing made against a search en- gine, or a newspaper but on the keeper of the public record." The legal notice issued by jus- tice minister Edward Zammit Lewis carries no rules, policy or procedure publicly available that outlines the way someone exercises the right to be forgot- ten. MITLA says complainants cannot expect to be "absolved" from the truth of their past in all occasions, especially when such availability of information is still relevant to the present and future, whether as individ- uals or as society at large, espe- cially when one considers that position that certain people, including public officers have. "Without specific rules, the right to be forgotten cannot be used as a blank cheque to re- write our (personal) history, especially when crimes, which affect the whole of society, are involved. If we start on this dangerous route, will we con- tinue to erase other, more hei- nous crimes, simply because it is not fair for one's criminal history to follow one for the rest of one's life? Where would the fairness and justice in that be for the victims of that crime? Where would that leave society at large?" Ghio asked. Courts given unfettered power to delete online public judgements Director of law courts can solely determine if person has "valid grounds" to have court judgement deleted from public website