Privacy Part 2: The Right to Be Forgotten

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Syllabus


February 24

The Court of Justice of the European Union made big waves last May when it ruled against Google on a claim brought by a Spanish citizen asserting a right to remove two news articles that appeared in Google search results when he searched for his own name. The case, now known as the case that recognized the “right to be forgotten,” has come to the forefront of discussions of online privacy. In today’s class, we’ll explore the “right to be forgotten,” how it applies in Europe, whether it could ever come to the United States, and how international companies address competing national balances over privacy and free speech.

We’ll also spend part of this day describing the final project for the class, and discuss how to pick a good community and issue to study for the project.

Our guest this week is Berkman staffer Adam Holland, who oversees the operations of several projects, including Chilling Effects, which tracks legal threats against online speech.

Readings

Optional Readings

Class Discussion

Please remember to sign your postings by adding four tildes (~~~~) to the end of your contribution. This will automatically add your username and the date/time of your post, like so: Andy 15:12, 7 November 2013 (EST)


Andy, could you please look over the microphones in the classroom? I had a really hard time hearing what was said in class last week. There was no problem with hearing the people closest to the camera, but those further away (including Mr. Faris) were really difficult to hear. :) JosefinS (talk) 06:38, 19 February 2015 (EST)



Thanks for the heads up, Josefin. I think we were having some problems with Rob's mic, and I'll tell folks in class to speak up to make sure the table mics pick up the sound. Andy (talk) 08:09, 19 February 2015 (EST)


I have a hard time deciding wether I like the ”right to be forgotten law” or not. It can be a good thing when it comes to giving people a second chance in life or preventing false rumors from destroing peoples lives. But it could at the same time undermine the freedom of speech, which is a very important important element in a democracy.

Also, three reasons for search results to be removed are that they are ”inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”, which is very subjective. Who should have the power to decide what is irrelevant and what is important information to the public? And what if information that is irrelevant today unexpectedly happens to be relevant in a few years?

I was surprised to know that ”Google has fielded about a hundred and twenty thousand requests for deletions and granted roughly half of them.”, because I haven´t heard about this law since last spring and didn´t reflect upon the fact that a lot of people could´ve used this ”right to be forgotten”. I wonder what kind of people that use it, why they do it, etc. Is it to be able to move on from previous mistakes? Is it to hide things about themselves to be able to defraud others? Whatever you think is right (to implement this right or not) there are several approaches on this matter that are relevant. It is important that we discuss these issues now, when more and more information can be found on the Internet. JosefinS (talk) 14:12, 22 February 2015 (EST)

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has embarrassing photos on Facebook and wished to delete them. Some of them were posted by myself and later realized how idiotic they were; some were then copied from mine and reposted by my friends; and ofcourse, some were taken by my friends of me doing embarrassing things. This is precisely what we fear, and the sensitive issue about privacy in the internet world.

Sometimes I wonder what exactly constitutes the internet? Freedom to post everything and share everything without restrictions? But the other issue is the problem about privacy. It is hard to have a completely free society on the internet if there are restrictions here and there. So where should privacy start? Should it be based upon the existing privacy laws in real life? I guess since we do live in the physical world, some of it have to derive from the real world. “The right to be forgotten” is precisely that. It governs the areas in Europe to have those rights. (Ref 1 and 2) From paragraph one I mentioned the three things that were questionable. Under the right to be forgotten law, Europeans could demand to have their data deleted regardless if it was posted by them, redistributed, or taken by someone else.

Google tried a different approach of allowing users to comment on searches of you. (ref 3) but against such tough regulations on privacy, I’m not surprised that Google abandoned it soon after. I believe they do not have aligned interests with regulators. Search engines should be pro- openness, pro-free data, anti-regulations. But such is difficult when the internet is actually possible to be governed by geographical location (as we learned previously). “The right to be forgotten” has really forced Google and other search engines to remove certain results from some searches. (ref 4) It goes into the territory of whether they would be reliable for keeping certain data online. I think Toobin’s story proved a very valid point. The way Nikki Catsouras was decapitated was gruesome, and the employees of the California Highway Patrol should not have spread the photos. (ref 5) It should be kept professional. When issues like this occur, it really brings us back to the privacy issue. Is it better to have an open internet where everything is available? Or is it better to control the internet with certain privacy settings? It seems that this topic would continue for a while.

I think “the right to be forgotten” comes in handy when it needs to be used, but also restricts true freedom of sharing data. When the internet first started and everyone thought it would not be under the jurisdiction of governments were very wrong. It was not only geographically controlled, not only digitally but physically (wires and cables), it was also controlled by means of “rights”, such as privacy. I could see issues with and without “the Right to Be Forgotten”. Both sides of the argument seems valid. Yet I do think the digital world reflects the physical one more than the other way round. So for the time being, I believe it benefits society more with these privacy settings than it harms us.


References:

Ref 1 - http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-paradox/right-to-be-forgotten

Ref 2 - http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2014/05/the_european_right_to_be_forgotten_is_just_what_the_internet_needs.single.html

Ref 3 - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/opinion/dont-force-google-to-forget.html?_r=0

Ref 4 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/03/google-erases-unflattering-news-stories-because-of-right-to-be-forgotten-is-this-like-burning-books-in-a-library/

Ref 5 - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/solace-oblivion

Caelum (talk) 21:40, 22 February 2015 (EST)


The discussion about the balance between "the right to be forgotten" and free speech seems to be another perspective to the privacy debate and reiterates that it's extremely difficult to define and, therefore, to make boundaries. I appreciate how the articles provided a variety of perspectives both for and against the right to be forgotten which allowed for some valuable insights. It seems as though coming up with an overall policy to allow people the right to be forgotten is practically impossible because of the variety of situations which cause people to want to practice that principle. It seems that the main argument for the right to be forgotten is that, "we didn't use to have immediate access to people's pasts and things were just fine back then, why do we have to change it?". The important fact they're leaving out is that the playing field is completely different now so the old rules won't work. We're dealing with a completely different situation, in that, even if there were regulation, things are STILL so much easier to find and unless you destroy the internet, that's not going to change. Like in Germany, someone can just as easily log in to google.com instead of google.de and turn up the unfiltered search results. The legislation can only hold for the EU, and unless they want to be like China and censor access to outside websites, they will have to accept that they can't control information in the way they feel they need to. That may be unfortunate for some people, but it's the bad that comes with the good. We can't choose to have an amazing resource of information which causes billions of people access to education, communication, work, travel, etc., and then say, "oh, but we only want the good stuff". Life doesn't work like that, and the internet certainly isn't an exception. Oliviabrinich (talk) 21:49, 22 February 2015 (EST)

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