Europe proposes a "right to be forgotten" European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has proposed a sweeping reform of the EU's data protection rules, claiming that the proposed rules will both cost less for governments and corporations to administer and simultaneously strengthen online privacy rights. The 1995 Data Protection Directive already gives EU citizens certain rights over their data. Organizations can process data only with consent, and only to the extent that they need to fulfil some legitimate purpose.
They are also obliged to keep data up-to-date, and retain personally identifiable data for no longer than is necessary to perform the task that necessitated collection of the data in the first place. They must ensure that data is kept secure, and whenever processing of personal data is about to occur, they must notify the relevant national data protection agency. The new proposals go further than the 1995 directive, especially in regard to the control they give citizens over their personal information. The Right to Be Forgotten. February 13, 2012 64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 88 At the end of January, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, announced the European Commission’s proposal to create a sweeping new privacy right—the “right to be forgotten.” The right, which has been hotly debated in Europe for the past few years, has finally been codified as part of a broad new proposed data protection regulation.
Although Reding depicted the new right as a modest expansion of existing data privacy rights, in fact it represents the biggest threat to free speech on the Internet in the coming decade. In theory, the right to be forgotten addresses an urgent problem in the digital age: it is very hard to escape your past on the Internet now that every photo, status update, and tweet lives forever in the cloud. In endorsing the new right, Reding downplayed its effect on free speech. Privacy...?: The right to be forgotten, or how to edit your history. The "Right to be Forgotten" is a very successful political slogan. Like all successful political slogans, it is like a Rorschach test.
People can see in it what they want. The debate would sound quite different if the slogan were actually something more descriptive, for example, the "right to delete". The European Commission has now proposed to make the "right to be forgotten" into a law. It's a big step to turn a vague political slogan into a law. The time for vague slogans must now give way to a more practical discussion of how the "right to be forgotten" could actually work. What is the "right to be forgotten"? On the other end of the spectrum, the "right to be forgotten" is viewed more sweepingly as a new right to delete information about oneself, even if published by a third-party, even if the publication was legitimate and the content was true.
As this debate unfolds, the lack of clarity is raising false expectations. Our thoughts on the right to be forgotten. One of the most talked about concepts in the European Commission’s new Data Protection Regulation proposal is the right to be forgotten. It is, at least in part, a continuation of the rights of access and objection that web users were granted in the 1995 Data Protection Directive. It also goes further, including other concepts that we have already embedded in our privacy principles and practices like improved transparency, providing clear information to people and giving them fine-grained privacy choices - including the ability to remove data they uploaded to our services.
Today, more and more people are entrusting their data to online hosting platforms and using social networks and search engines to find information on the Web - and there are no signs of web usage slowing. So it’s vitally important that both those who provide online services and those who use them have a clear understanding of how a concept such as the right to be forgotten might apply. Hosting Platforms: Foggy thinking about the Right to Oblivion. I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Switzerland working on Street View. And I treated myself to a weekend of skiing too. The weather wasn't great, we had a lot of mountain fog, but then, the entire privacy world seems to be sort of foggy these days.
In privacy circles, everybody's talking about the Right to be Forgotten. The European Commission has even proposed that the "right to be forgotten" should be written into the up-coming revision of the Privacy Directive. Originally, a rather curious French "universal right" that doesn't even have a proper English-translation (right to be forgotten? Right to oblivion? More and more, privacy is being used to justify censorship. Most conversations about the right to oblivion mix all this stuff up. 1) If I post something online, should I have the right to delete it again? 2) If I post something, and someone else copies it and re-posts it on their own site, do I have the right to delete it? 5) Should the Internet just learn to "forget"?
Google must remember our right to be forgotten. Europe Takes Its Own Path on Internet Privacy. Viviane Reding responds to Reporters Without Borders’ criticism of “right to be forgotten” In its 2012 “Enemies of the Internet” report, Reporters Without Borders voiced reservations about a proposed European Commission directive and regulation on online personal data protection that would enshrine the “right to be forgotten.” Under the proposed reform, people will be able to have their online personal data deleted “if there are no legitimate grounds for retaining it.” All websites, both those hosted inside the European Union and those hosted outside it, would be obliged to comply with requests in the absence of such grounds.
This poses a real risk for freedom of information, as individuals would be able to invoke a right of deletion when content no longer suits them, a right that could override the public interest in the information remaining available. Yesterday, Reporters Without Borders received a response from the spokesperson of Viviane Reding, the European Commission vice-president responsible for justice, who is the initiator of this directive. The reply follows.