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.

Download slides from this week's class (the slides this week are solely from the first half hour of class, where we talked about the final project)

Readings

Optional Readings

Links from Class

Online Intermediaries Project: https://publixphere.net/i/noc/category/136

Chilling Effects: https://www.chillingeffects.org

Berkman Center's H2O platform: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/h2o

EU ECJ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Justice

Great post on definition of "public figure" in US: http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/p117.htm

US Census standards for releasing personal information: http://www.census.gov/topics/population/genealogy.html

Berkman paper on online intermediaries in the US (co-written by Adam Holland, Andy Sellars, Ryan Budish, among others): https://publixphere.net/i/noc/page/OI_Case_Study_Intermediary_Liability_in_the_United_States

Here's the advisory opinion prior to RTBF ruling: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=138782&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=362663

DMLP post summarizing the advisory opinion: http://www.dmlp.org/blog/2013/cjeu-advocate-general-finds-no-right-be-forgotten-search-engines-under-eu-law

List of search engines: http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/

Data on Google's RTBF requests: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/

A very, very technical paper about search neutrality: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs286r/courses/fall09/papers/altman_jair.pdf

A very early blog post (way before this case) proposed a few frameworks for the "right to be forgotten": http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2011/03/foggy-thinking-about-right-to-oblivion.html

“When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product”: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/futureoftheinternet/2012/03/21/meme-patrol-when-something-online-is-free-youre-not-the-customer-youre-the-product/

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 is another difficult perspective to the privacy debate and reiterates that it's extremely hard 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 the Internet is completely destroyed, 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)



In the context of human rights, the right to be forgotten is akin the right to be left alone. Also similar to the right to be protected from unlawful searches in the home, and the right to peaceful enjoyment of a dwelling in the context of housing law. All this talk of free speech being under assault is a lot of hyperventilating, mostly espoused by those who think corporations have a right to collect any information from anybody at any time in the pursuit of profit. Sorry, those click disclosures on every internet transaction don’t count as full disclosure, and have been proven in court in many occasions to be insufficient. The reason being that those disclosures act as a one sided negotiation – either you accept the terms of the purchase, including sharing the information with third parties or you don’t get to make X-mas purchases on line. That’s an unfair contract.

The internet is finally bumping against its limits on free information and privacy. In fact, there are already laws protecting individuals from bullying on line and online breaches of bank accounts and financial information. So, if the rights of corporations and individuals are protected from libel and defamation, why shouldn’t individuals receive the same protection if they are private citizens? The problem in the U.S. is that profits trump everything else including free speech, in fact, they already censor blogs and social websites. Furthermore, the U.S. government has a free run to retrieve whatever information it wants from any individual living in the U.S., citizen or not.

Asking Goggle to delete records under the current guidelines established in the European Union is the least that can be asked of Google and other search engines in the U.S. as well as Face book and other social networks. Those who clamor for freedom of speech are forgetting that privacy does not exists any more, it is merely an illusion. Unless an individual takes complete control of his or her information, one cannot expect anyone in the U.S. to respect his or her privacy. The internet is heading into uncharted waters with this privacy issue and the right to be forgotten. Expect them to be barraged with thousands of law suits from individuals with criminal records who long after serving their sentences will still be haunted by their criminal past, from private citizens who have been victims of bullying and crimes on line and about a hundred other reasons I cannot enumerate on this blog.Hromero10 (talk) 08:36, 23 February 2015 (EST)



Hello All!

As I contemplate “the right to be forgotten” on the internet I like to consider how these scenarios would have played out before the internet existed and try to apply a similar logic to our current situation.

In the past, if libelous information was published in a newspaper, the paper’s recourse would be to publish a retraction. However they could not ask for all their subscribers to destroy their copies. Consequently, in some circumstances the plaintiff could be awarded compensation for these damages.

Keeping this in mind, while I do believe libelous defamatory statements should be removable on the internet, I do not think it is wise to condone the removal of truthful statements and images from the internet because it would erase an accurate history and replace it with a false one.

Ironically, I suppose allowances such as these would benefit future historians, since it would validate their purpose, as they would have to not trust their initial findings through online searches. Instead, they would have to search for truthful information in more obscure locations.

Just as today’s historians need to look at primary sources including personal journals, I imagine historians of the future will be in search of the personal hard drives of the famous figures of our era.

-Emily MacIntyre

EmiMac (talk) 12:07, 23 February 2015 (EST)



What we all fight for is to accomplish something in life in order to be remembered, with our achievements, creations, contributions to the society. At the same time we are fighting for staying in world’s collective memory, many of us are craving for a fresh start, for an opportunity for a second chance. The European union’s response is the proclaiming of the “right to be forgotten”. EU is motivating this newly established right with the need of protection of privacy. Jeffrey Rosen is saying “the right to be forgotten addresses an urgent problem in the digital age: it is very hard to escape your past on the Internet ” which shows exactly that people are projecting this issue just in the online world. I think that we should not limit our reflections on the subject by transposing this right only to the digital environment. Eric Posner says “ Once information is online, it can be forever instantly accessible through search engines. No need to dig through archives or court records for the record of Costeja’s debt”. This clearly shows that Internet is not the problem, it is not the net which is menacing the right of privacy , it just makes things faster. The information would still exist on paper based records just it would not be so easily accessible. I find it rather unfair to blame Internet for just speeding up the process of search.

At the beginning I was very controversial about whether I am more a supporter of the European thesis regarding the issue or the American one. On one hand a situation like one described at the beginning of “the Solace of oblivion” by Jeffrey Toobin is really something we all would like to prevent as horrible and unjust. On the other hand, the demand of the two German killers demanding anonymity and suing Wikipedia’s, I find equally unjust.

I think there are really different aspects of this “right to be forgotten” which are still not well defined and speared neither by the legislation nor by the jurisprudence. I very much like the three categories of this right as described by Peter Fleischer. When it is about a personal information disclosed by someone, this person should be the one able to take it out of the public space the same way he put it there – the first category. But once this information, fact or action, has affected and interacted with the existence of someone else, it has become part of his “world” already , as I believe is the case with the German killers. We should be mastering our own lives but not those of other people and if through our actions we had become in someway part of someone else’s existence it would be unfair to dispose of his life as well. There are many dark periods in human’s history but it does not mean we should erase the names of the villains out of it.

The desire for a clean start, where no one would know about crazy parties we had as teenagers or personal tragedies , is a tempting option for everyone but I consider it first of all, impossible for execution and second I do not agree it is right to be claimed. Even if we make filter in search engines and ban certain websites, we would just use the technological capacity of the net to restrict the information in it but what we are supposed to do with books and newspapers? Does it mean we should burn them all if we found in them such kind of violation of the right to be forgotten or it is not the same just because they could be found only in libraries but not in Google ?

Second, in our lives we make choices every day, some of them turn out to be more important than others but these choices are defining us and make us what we are and we should be ready to face the consequences of each and every one of them otherwise it is cheating. And to the question that some people ask, whether we are supposed to bear the consequences. (Gia (talk) 06:01, 24 February 2015 (EST))



Neuralizers for All

The Slate article by Eric Posner made an imperative distinction in the discourse of Privacy and the Right to be Forgotten; that is, personal information is trickier to control in this day and age not because it cannot be erased, but simply because the Internet makes it easier to access.

A cogent commentary on the state of our society, the zeitgeist of our evolving understandings of what is “personal” and what is “public.” A commentary on what we are accepting as reality and perception – about ourselves. And down into the Carrolian Rabbit hole we go, falling, falling, falling – the machine, the world that we have created within these machines and within this network of machines is now fashioning us into things we are not; with the capacity to put information out there selectively, recklesslessly, ignorantly, and consciously, we are increasingly aware and sensitive to this notion of designing who we are and how we are perceived – and when embarrassing or private details about ourselves begin to create this digital narrative of who we are, our instant reaction is to press some buttons to change people’s perceptions about us –- be they true or not.

This fear of the Internet and the parts of it we cannot control is a perfect example of how man has finally created a mirror of himself that is haunting him more and more; he has created a creature, amorphous and ungraspable, that has the power to make perception reality. And make us believe that what everyone sees online is what everyone will believe.

I continue to return to the Solove article from two classes back on the confusion of what it is to have private information and what, exactly, privacy means now – if it ever had a meaning to begin with. A chilling idea that such a treasured notion can be so confused, interpreted and misinterpreted, and, even, abused, as in the case of the German murderers suing Wiki to have their names removed from an article. But even if our notions of privacy is as treasured to us as it is confusing, we still cannot allow our personal follies to reinvent what is true. Again, returning to the Posner article; it’s not that this information or facts about ourselves are “erased” – rather, it is simply made harder to access by the general world.

Gia, the poster on this board just before me made a rather wonderful summation of the situation in which we wish to extract information about ourselves even after it has come into possession of another individual. And yes, Gia, I agree with you in the particular way that you phrased it: that once information has been released by ourselves and becomes part of someone else’s “world” it is now of this world and it is no longer our clear and divine right to remove such information. By no means do I agree with the idea that our information is free and usable by all -- my information is my currency, it’s worth a lot to me and I will jealously guard it as best I can even if I know that for the most part it is a losing battle especially in the US. The EU is on the right track in putting this concern for protecting the individual on the table but it has yet to iron out the practicalities of what is enforceable, what is true to free speech and what is true to the act of recording history.

Tbe EU’s Right to be Forgotten movement seems to believe that we all have the individual right to pull out a Neuralizer – that gun from Men in Black otherwise known as the “memory eraser” – whether the memory is fact or fiction, we have the right to manipulate this certain virtual space to a reality that we are most “comfortable” with.

I’m finding myself more and more in the camp of regulation starts with yourself; if you post it it was your decision; if you acted that way, that was also your decision. In this Internet, smartphone, cameras everywhere age, I think it is more a matter of us changing our perception of our environment so that it has caught up with the modern age; we still somehow believe that we are living in the 19th century regarding what we believe we can get away with. The Internet has brought wonders to our world; but it has also brought this new world where we must always be more conscious about our actions; everyone has a camera, everyone has a blog, and, we are also humans – everyone makes mistakes. The lines where I see potential protection and hope in this grim and overexposed world is in the world of copyright (as Nikki Catsouras’ family attempted to approach it through) where you can order someone to take down an image, video, or recording that actually belongs to you, and in the legal worlds of defamation, false light, and appropriation.

To me, it is within these realms that there is hope to morally correct false or morally remove true information from public access. The other options currently visible on the table are just different iterations of a rather dangerous-looking Memory Erasing Gun.

Chanel Rion


Chanel Rion (talk) 09:38, 24 February 2015 (EST)



'The Right to be Forgotten' is one of the first big battles of internet privacy in our modern age. I found it interesting that the European Union took such a drastically different approach than the United States in these first steps. However I would like to start by saying that I believe in time these differences will converge into a larger global format, simply due to the fact that the internet has helped lead to globalization in everything it has touched and this would be difficult to retract.

While the E.U. used broad terms that may scare some, personally I agree with the logic of 'staying ahead of the curve.' If we just look at how significantly the internet has changed in the past 10 years with the introduction of smartphones we can only be so accurate in our predictions of what the internet will be like in another 10 or even 20 years. Laws take so long to be drafted, adapted and perfected that any strict policy of this complexity would be out of date soon after it's implementation. That's why I understand the want to use broad terms, but this also leads to the risk of leaving many decisions in the hands of people or groups who maybe shouldn't have that level of control. While Google doesn't want this responsibility of managing screenings, it's business has shifted into one that requires it. If they are not able to properly adapt then they too can be replaced by another company who can. So as a business that wants to be the central information source for it's users, logic says they will adapt.

On the other hand the idea that this specific censorship could be misused to hide information from being easily accessed is a scary thought. One of the reasons the internet is so popular and is quickly changing the way the world thinks and acts is the ease of access to all human knowledge. This may seem extreme but if we put limits on what can be found via the internet we start to change what the internet is, an open network of communication and information exchange.

In the end I believe that neither of these solutions are ideal. What I found the most interesting in these readings was that Google used to allow users to comment on GoogleNews articles about themselves. This seems like a brilliant way to allow any individual to make a sound argument defending themselves or explaining their circumstances. This method wouldn't limit anyone searching the user in question from finding any information. While this may not be an all-encompassing solution I believe it is the closest towards what we can implement quickly and make adaptable for future technologies.

Samaei1 (talk) 13:18, 24 February 2015 (EST)



To say honestly, I have never heard of this rule and I am not one supporting it. I believe the information we find when Googling our name (or the name of another) is valuable information about that person. If a mistake was made early in the 20's for example, having that information available on the Internet is the price one must pay. If every 'bad' or not so good article/photo/event was erased, that is not only taking away freedom of spech as my classmates mentioned above, but it is also hiding information to future bosses, schools, etc. You cannot erase a mistake in your life by simply erasing an article on Google. As a citizen, we all have the ability and right to know about others if we so please. I look forward to discussion tonight as I imagine (from reading comments above) that this is a very topic many agree with but also many disagree with. Cbore001 (talk) 13:54, 24 February 2015 (EST)

Posner (2014) supports the idea that we all have the “right to be forgotten”. Europe is ahead of the United States in this area Posner compared the United States with Europe and indicated that America is rigid and ideological while Europe is pragmatic and flexible. Examples were provided of a man asking Google to remove data about him that linked to another website. It is believed that the old and embarrassing troubles living forever online is one that our laws do not address yet. Old information can be pulled up at any time on anyone via the internet. While I have conflicting viewpoints on “right to be forgotten”, my perspective leans towards the outlook that individuals have the right to request personal data removed from search engines.

As someone highly connected to the fitness industry, many aspiring athletes and models are photographed for promotional purposes or personal gain in attire and positions that usually are regrettable in the future. While an athlete may take a harmless photo in a bikini, it is not unusual for those photographs to copied and used on websites and forums that do not match the moral compass of the athlete. So while, it was their discretion to have their photo taken, the integrity of the person can be compromised as the name and photograph are now searchable and connected to a third-party. I am in agreement with someone’s right to have data removed. According to Zittrain (2014), European court decided Google “must forget”. Google can be demanded to remove certain reputation-harming search results that is accessed by one’s name. Zittrain (2014) continues to report that protecting an individual’s reputation is protected is important and a policy matter that must be legislated by the court which is mismatched to the evolving intricacies of the online world.

As there continues to be ongoing conflict about protection of the freedom of speech and privacy, I read a great article by ENISA, European Union Agency for Network and Information Security Agency, which address concerns about the expectations and practice of the right to be forgotten, which can be found here: http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/identity-and-trust/library/deliverables/the-right-to-be-forgotten/at_download/fullReport

References:

Posner, E. (2014). "We All Have the Right to Be Forgotten," Slate.

Zittrain, J. (2014). "Don't Force Google to 'Forget'," New York Times.

TashaTasha (talk) 14:55, 24 February 2015 (EST)



Hello, everyone. Looking forward to tonight's class and discussion. There's a few things I'd like to encourage everyone to think about in the larger context of the ruling and its consequences. First is the issue of Google (or other search engines) notifying affected sites of the removal of one or more of their links in Search results. I.e. Google tells the Guardian that in response to an RTBF request, Google has removed a Guardian link from certain search results. How do you feel about this and why?

Second, consider the role of contextualization. This is legal activity being acted on in legal ways, but the result created may be forbidden by law. No one is saying that newspapers cannot publish articles or have archives, and no one is saying that search engines cannot exist or that they cannot aggregate material to present in results. and yet... We have emergent meaning and cultural/legal significance based solely on contextualization of information. What are the long-term implications of this? To what extent is this a culture clash, and to what extent might it be a new defining feature of he digitization of information? For some reason I am reminded of Greg Egan's 1992 story "Dust".


Finally, regardless of your opinion on the actual RTBF, how do you feel about historical preservation of the affected URLs and the decisions made affecting them? Is it all right to memory-hole those? If we need to preserve the historical record, who should do it, and in what way, and who should be allowed to study the data? 

Aholland (talk) 14:58, 24 February 2015 (EST)



This week’s readings pose a very true and real threat that we will find ourselves with the explosion and utilization of social media outlets. The reality is that the Internet is not going away, and neither is the majorly popular resources and engines like Google. The “right to be forgotten” seems like an idea that would work in theory, but in practice, has so many faults. With Europe taking the first attempt at this conflict, and somewhat failing, it’s only a matter of time before other bigger superpowers will begin to have to address this. Jeff Rosen writes, “Europeans have a long tradition of declaring abstract privacy rights in theory that they fail to enforce in practice.” And although this may be true, I don’t think any abstract idea of regulating can be properly implemented with ideas such as limiting or regulating the Internet. I think that the general rules put forth by the E.U. to attempt to regulate such cases is putting the onus on an data driven engine to be accountable for actions by an individual who was neither forced to do those actions or in any other way coerced to take part in the actions. In the example Rosen presented, of a young girl caught in a picture with a beer. The government is holding the website accountable for something the young girl a.) Should not have been doing b.) Been apart of actions that would capture such activieis. Leaving the Internet the way it is now, free and open, will hold individuals accountable for what they do, especially in domains such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. If the consideration were based off false accounts or information, which was untrue, the case would be a matter of libel or defamation of character. The freedom of the internet holds users accountable and will force them to consider where and what they take part in before the actually commit any actions. Jonathan Zittrain does a beautiful job of illustrating the answer and ways in which solutions can be explored. In his 2014 article, “Don’t Force Google to ‘Forget’” he claims that the E.U. is not necessarily wrong in their worries, but their approach and implementation is something to be desired. I believe Zittrain is correct and captures it perfectly when he says, “Whatever the solution, the status quo is no longer stable. In the wake of the decision by the European Court of Justice, search engine companies now face a potential avalanche of requests for redaction.” Mhoching (talk) 15:07, 24 February 2015 (EST)



I had not heard of the "right to be forgotten" before this class, so I'm a bit amazed that it exists. Before the Internet (and now) there were journals, history books, notes, law cases, family bibles, photos, TV recordings, radio recordings not to mention newspaper stories. Yes, looking people up on all of those materials is somewhat more daunting than a "Google" search, but it can be done, and it is still done by those with a dogged determination to look into people's pasts.

There are no ways to remove oneself from history books. What is a matter of public record is still public record. Why is the internet treated differently from any other form of public dissemination? Private organizations catalog and index public records in their own "search engines" most of which can also be searched online from their websites. You would spend years going after all the various resources that have a copy of that information. Sure, it would take longer as the information may not be there at the flick of a few key strokes, but it's still there.

Bottom line for me, and I embrace the Internet's power wholeheartedly for I am a distance student after all, is that I find it ridiculously naive to think that if you win a case getting Google to remove a link, that now no one can ever find that bad information about you and suddenly you are pure. I also do not like this law as now you can play havoc with History. What we do today reflects on us 100 years from now. Did it happen? Or did it not?

ErikaLRich (talk) 15:12, 24 February 2015 (EST)


In light of European Court of Justice's ruling about "the right to be forgotten", this subject is becoming more and more important in this so-called 'age of data':how do we balance individual privacy rights vs. public right to be informed? I'm looking forward to see how the ECJ ruling affects internet users in Europe.

It's rather unlikely for a similar law to be implemented here in the US, with the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech for everyone. Having a censor-free internet would preserve the free space for people to express their opinion; however, I do like the 'curated page' idea that Jonathan Zittrain discussed on his article, where people can choose what to include on the first page of search results containing their name while providing uncensored results on the next pages. This would preserve free-speech while giving people some degree of control towards what other people see when they are being searched on the internet.

Rpeisch (talk) 15:19, 24 February 2015 (EST)



In reading the Google Spain case (Costeja decision) material, I could not help thinking about the privacy and free speech interests underlying the United States Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). These laws seem to have some of the same interests at stake as the interests in being forgotten represented by Costeha

When evaluating a request to suppress certain search results, Google.es must consider some of the same factors embodied in these two U.S. laws. For example, the privacy of an individual in his or her medical records is clearly being balanced by the HIPAA law with the needs of the care provider to communicate with its professional and business partners. The Health and Human Services website describes the rights simply, “The HIPAA Privacy Rule provides federal protections for individually identifiable health information… At the same time, the Privacy Rule is balanced so that it permits the disclosure of health information needed for patient care and other important purposes.”1 Of course, insurers that cover the costs related to care need the patient information to confirm that the costs are covered despite the privacy interests of the insured individual.

According to the Costeja decision, Google.es now must suppress search results that are “irrelevant, outdated, or otherwise objectionable." According to the Federal Trade Commission website, the FCRA similarly limits the types of credit and payment information that can be published about an individual, the time limits for different types of information, and even who can see those results based on the needs of the parties.2 Old, outdated information must not be published.

While I concede that it would be a formidable project to compare and contrast the FCRA and HIPAA laws with the privacy and free speech interests that are characteristic of the Internet, the comparison on its face is analogous. The analogy of these laws to the privacy and free speech interests connected with Internet search engines is conspicuously absent from the readings this week.

Works Cited 1 HHS.gov. 2015. Understanding Health Information Privacy. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/index.html. [Accessed 24 February 15] 2 FTC.gov. 2015. A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/pdf-0096-fair-credit-reporting-act.pdf. [Accessed 24 February 15].

Gary Brown (talk) 15:43, 24 February 2015 (EST)



Hi guys, Bummed not to be able to make it to class tonight, but I’m over at the Kennedy School doing a Forum with the former President of Finland (who in all honesty would probably have some interesting thoughts on tonight’s topic).

I’m fascinated by Europe’s recent rounds of legislation concerning the right to be forgotten as well as its implications for the United States. While personally, I think it would be great to be able to clear potentially damaging search results, I understand the concern from American counterparts. Like many things in the United States, it feels like European standards would be too open to exploitation by those who can afford to manipulate information about themselves.

I’d be interested though to hear some thoughts in tonight’s class about Zittrain’s suggestions for more creative search engines and the use of apologies for censored information. While in no way perfect, it seems like this may be a constructive way to move forward? Meredith (talk) 16:01, 24 February 2015 (EST)



If President Halonen would like to come chat about this with us please feel free to invite her! :-) Andy (talk) 16:55, 24 February 2015 (EST)



Hello everyone,

It makes perfect sense in my mind the right to be forgotten, because it deals with the in a way if you will manipulation of private information by another. In the United States we have the fifth amendment that addresses the issue of this spectrum, but in a sense if pictures, dialogues or any other information will be circulating the internet without permission of its owner, then there is an infringement of the law of privacy.

Now what I did not understand complexly is how this is a issue of freedom of speech, well certainly it is not heated speech, but it is the manipulation of some private property without consent.

I understand how this would be an issue of the first amendment if the property would not be private, and just by putting it online does it make it public, even though it stills has characteristics of private property because the scope of interests, or information is not necessarily public unless it is. I mean pictures of someone that do not affect public policy or public interests should not be considered public.

Furthermore, I think then the disjunctive is that one should have to objectively establish a standard or threshold of private or public property, and from there it would be a matter of first or fifth amendment.

Nonetheless, this is a latent problem and needs proper resolution, for this reason, I think that the right to be forgotten is and will be very important in our lives as technology evolves, we cannot let technology run our privacy matters but automation, but we need to be active participants of our evolving future.

(16:18, 24 February 2015 (EST)16:18, 24 February 2015 (EST)~) Edwin Duque



I remember reading about the "right to forget" last year and being completely stunned by the European Court’s ruling and I put myself squarely in the anti-right-to-forget camp. But after these readings I’m not so sure. I now see the need for a right like this to exist but I still wholeheartedly disagree with the quasi-judicial power the ruling grants Google.

On an individual level, forgetting – to some extent – is part of being a healthy human being; it’s part of learning to cope with life and survive; it even allows us to make room for new information. I wonder if on a societal level, some amount of forgetting is healthy as well. Not the big things like the Holocaust of course, but all the minutia – like an 18-year old getting caught with a gram or the gruesome death of a child.

The internet makes forgetting very difficult. It makes second chances hard to come across. And that’s upsetting but, for me at least, it’s not as upsetting as a businessman getting Google to erase links to evidence of him being a tax avoider. Because we’re dealing with facts. And there’s just no clear test to decide what facts belongs in the private sphere and what facts deserves to be in the public sphere. The court certainly didn’t give helpful guidance and Google is in no position to be the decider.

If the “right to forget” ever became an issue in the US and Google was deemed the appropriate fielder, I might argue that Google is a legal person with first amendment rights and that Google’s unique form of expression is posting search results and so requiring Google to alter search results is a violation of the speech clause of the first amendment.

But here’s a crazy thought, what happens if Google stops being the premier search engine? When it loses its supremacy? Then the European Court’s decision to outsource the problem to Google seems short-sighted. Ultimately it seems like need to keep refining its wisdom on this topic, taking it case by case, until a more lasting and reliable precedent emerges.

This topic makes my head spin a little. Excited to talk about it more with y’all!

Kelly.wilson (talk) 16:42, 24 February 2015 (EST)


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