Right to be Forgotten

Technological advances in current times have created a wealth of accessible sources for information regarding topics from current events to recipes to history to automotive blogs. The phrase (and sometimes rebuke) “Google it” takes on a certain level of significance within most people’s lives. While it is now extremely easy to research a topic and access the information needed, it has also become exceedingly easy to perform a cursory internet search of a person’s name and find out many things about them.

Before the internet, one had to dig through records in a library or a government building’s records repository to find similar information about a person. If a newspaper printed a story on a person, hardly anyone would see or remember it after the next day's paper came out. A “right to be forgotten” of a sort existed within the technology of how information was stored and catalogued.

The internet has changed that. Now, practically anything that has ever been printed can be found in just a few keystrokes and well-chosen search terms. Much of our personal and legal history can be uncovered by anyone with an internet connection. It also gives anyone, not just professional writers, reporters and court clerks the ability to instantly publish information about themselves or someone else. 

Being accessible and open on social media easily allows for connections, communication and discourse, but it also leaves a large footprint of personal information.  The first step for many who wish to become more private may be to lock, suspend, or delete their Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts.  But what about other public information?

One can still, in certain circumstances, have legal records sealed or expunged. Before the internet, this was an effective way to keep any untrue or outdated legal information about oneself out of the public eye. Today, even if you successfully have the records legally changed, there will probably be easy to find references to it on the internet.

Overview of the Right to be Forgotten

The “Right to be Forgotten” (RTBF) is an idea--and currently a law in the European Union--that in certain cases, advocates for an individual’s right to privacy over the freedom of speech and information. The right to be forgotten helps ensure the right to privacy by the deletion of links to a person’s personal information in search engine results. It argues that individuals can be continuously punished for petty crimes after they have served their punishment, or mistakes in their past which no longer reflect the person they are now. For instance, pictures or videos that are uploaded to the internet in poor judgement that then appear on “revenge porn” sites tagged with the person’s full name. Acquaintances or prospective employers who search that person’s name could form a strong, and possibly incorrect, opinion of a person from a few keystrokes into Google. Many feel this is unjust.

Advocates for freedom of speech say that such laws would severely diminish the quality of information available online and create a mutated, revisionist history. While it doesn't actually remove the information from the internet, removing search engine links about oneself that one doesn’t want people to find is seen by some as a form of censorship. The harder that information is to find on the internet, they argue, the less open and free the internet becomes, and thereby, less useful as a tool.

History

The RTBF has its roots in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union , which was ratified in 2000. Article 8, titled “Protection of personal data” states:

1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority
   

In 2010, Spanish lawyer Mario Costeja González filed a court claim against Google regarding searches of his name that linked to 1998 notices of property being auctioned off to pay his debts. Costeja González argued that this was no longer relevant as he had long ago cleared up his financial difficulties, but that he was still being negatively impacted by the data. On May 13, 2014, the highest court for the European Union, the European Court of Justice, ruled in his favor against Google, codifying what has come to be known as the RTBF.

Because of this ruling, Google (and other search engines, including, but not limited to Bing and Yahoo) are now required in Europe to consider requests from people to have search results omitted that relate to them. There are also similar versions of the RTBF in place or in discussion in parts of Asia and South America.

It is important to note that the information being disputed is not removed from the internet by the Right to be Forgotten laws. Only the link to it in the search engine is removed, and even then, only when the name or personal information of the person disputing it is searched. It still exists, for example, on a newspaper’s website, but it becomes much more difficult to find unless you already know specifically what you are looking for and where to find it.

Looking Toward the Future

In the future, as the RTBF becomes a bigger part of how interactions take place in in society and online, new technologies will affect how easily someone can advocate for their own privacy. Software engineers are developing a new software called Oblivion to help automate these requests.

Oblivion will automate the process that, for now, is being done entirely manually. An Oblivion prototype was able to process requests for anonymity at a rate of 273 per second, much faster than the team of paralegals who have evaluated hundreds of thousands of links for Google. The software scans the submitted link using natural language processing and image recognition algorithms to see if it meets criteria for link removal. The link and tagged information is submitted to a third party, the Google help desk, for example, where the attributes are matched up to what appears in the article and, if it checks out, an ownership token is issued to the user.

Finally, the token and the user’s explanation of why the link should be taken down is submitted to Google. They will still have to manually decide whether the reason for take down is legitimate or not, to insure, for instance, that it isn’t an issue of public importance. Even though a human being still has to manually take down the link, with Oblivion, most of the legwork is taken out of the process.

Ethical Dilemmas

Letting anyone remove any link related to her/him is clearly not an ethical answer. If this were the case, it could be heavily abused, and the Internet’s powerful ability to search for information would be crippled. In order for a free society to function, we need an open flow and exchange of information, even if we don’t always agree with it.

On the other hand, society doesn’t have a need or a right to know all of your personal information, especially if one isn’t a public figure or the information doesn’t affect society. The unintentional release of intimate photos or records of a now-resolved legal matter should not be able to haunt someone forever.

Conclusion 

The Right to be Forgotten flies in the face of the information age's seemingly most convenient aspect: being able to drop a name, a term or phrase into a search engine and quickly learn everything there is to know about the subject. With this near omniscience, it makes sense to find ways to reasonably limit this power from damaging a private individual's way of life and pursuit of happiness.