The Right To Be
Forgotten
In 2006, the European Union and Argentina put the concept of the
right to be forgotten into practice. This issue started from the desires
of individuals to "determine the development of their life in an
autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized
as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past."
The Controversy
• The vagueness of current rulings to implement such a right has been the
controversy about the practicality of establishing a right to be forgotten to the
status of an international human right in respect to access to information.
• This has an impact on the right to freedom of expression, right to privacy, and
creating a right to be forgotten would decrease the quality of the internet through
censorship and rewriting of history.
• Can help an individual if the individual’s internet footprint contains private
information, such as past petty crimes, or content on revenge porn websites.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
• Opportunity for a fresh start
• Expose people to danger
• If someone made a mistake in the past, or was
•
wrongly framed for something they didn’t do
• Maintain the right of personal privacy
• Hiding personally identifiable information,
pictures taken covertly, information on one’s
private life
• Remove of emotional burden
• If someone had a family member who recently
died; photographs/videos of death, news articles
Hiding important information, such as someone’s violent
criminal past, or dangerous environment concerning
property, could lead another person to injury or death
• Prevent education on past events
•
Could hinder people from learning from past mistakes –
no historical review and analysis
• Can infringe on free speech
•
Censors people from talking about other people
irrespectively of it’s credibility
The Debate
“Should the US adopt the ‘right to be forgotten’ online?”
At the Kaufman Music Center in New York, two teams of two debated whether or not the US
should adopt the right to be forgotten. Paul F. Nemitz and Eric Posner both argued for the
adoption, while Andrew McLaughlin and Jonathan Zittrain argued against.
"...as technology moves on, more and more information will be
collected about you, by the state, and by private parties, and your
life will be planted by them. Your life will be profiled, you will
be predicted, and you will be manipulated unless you have a tool
in law to control your own destiny in the end. What we're
discussing here is the power relation between us as an individual,
and as a free citizen of the United States, and on the other hand,
the power of Google - Google is free to do anything in terms of
plotting you, predicting you, and manipulating you. Do you as
an individual have standing and rights to defend your
freedom?..." - Paul F. Nemitz
"...the right to be forgotten, no matter how you try to construct
it, is censorship. Censorship has to clear a very high bar in order
to be justified in a free and democratic society. The right to be
forgotten does not clear that bar. There are vastly better ways to
accommodate the emotional rationale for the right to be
forgotten, and that doesn't even really get into the
implementation dilemmas - all of the different practical reasons
why this thing will never, in any meaningful sense, become a
right. First of all, it’s way too prone to abuse, it is vague, it is
subjective, the language in the European courts decision is that
information should be deleted from searches about the person
if it is inadequate..." - Andrew McLaughlin
Analysis
“Should the US adopt the ‘right to be forgotten’ online?”
Both teams have good points on whether or not the ‘right to be forgotten’
should be a right, not just for the US, but in general.
I do believe that we should have control over some aspects of
the content published about our individual selves, and over the
content we publicly post from ourselves. If we don’t have some
control over information about us, then there would be no such
thing as privacy.
I also believe that certain information should stay public, and
not censored, due to the fact that people can learn from such
information and possibly protect themselves – if the
information portrays that that particular person is a danger to
society.
My opinion is technology should be able to evolve around our privacy concerns while
also being able to provide educational information to the public. Irrelevant personal
privacy information shouldn’t be displayed publically unless the user posts it
themselves; while information concerning the safety of the public should not be
censored.
A Question For You
Is the right to be forgotten censorship, or
is it a necessity for keeping personal
information private?
References
• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0267364913000654
• http://rightobeforgoten.weebly.com/blog/pros-and-cons
• http://peterfleischer.blogspot.co.nz/2011/03/foggy-thinking-about-right-to-oblivion.html
• http://www.npr.org/2015/03/18/393643901/debate-should-the-u-s-adopt-the-right-to-beforgotten-online