Difference between revisions of "Right to be Forgotten"
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==Case Studies== | ==Case Studies== | ||
===Nikki Catsouras=== | ===Nikki Catsouras=== | ||
| − | In 2006, a girl named Nikki Catsouras from the United States was decapitated in a | + | In 2006, a girl named Nikki Catsouras from the United States was decapitated in a gruesome car accident.<ref name=Nikki> Jeffrey Toobin, [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/solace-oblivion "The Solace of Oblivion: In Europe, the right to be forgotten trumps the Internet"]. Annals of Law, 29 September 2014. Retrieved 14 March 2019.</ref> Highway patrol officers who arrived on the scene took photos of the incident as standard procedure calls for, however two of those workers later shared the disturbing photos online. Due to the rapid spread of information online, some of these photographs were eventually discovered by some of the family members of Nikki Catsouras. Nikki's father, Christos Catsouras, attempted to have these images removed from the internet but failed to do so.<ref name=Nikki/> Since the United States has no law in place for the right to be forgotten, Nikki's photographs will remain on the internet indefinitely. |
===Google Transparency Report=== | ===Google Transparency Report=== | ||
Google gathered and categorized data about all of the delisting requests which Europeans made from 2014-2017. The infographic below shows in detail the summary of the people who exercised their right to be forgotten as well as the information requested for delisting.<ref> Michee Smith, [https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/updating-our-right-be-forgotten-transparency-report/ "Updating our “right to be forgotten” Transparency Report"]. Google Inc., 26 February 2018. Retrieved 14 March 2019.</ref> | Google gathered and categorized data about all of the delisting requests which Europeans made from 2014-2017. The infographic below shows in detail the summary of the people who exercised their right to be forgotten as well as the information requested for delisting.<ref> Michee Smith, [https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/updating-our-right-be-forgotten-transparency-report/ "Updating our “right to be forgotten” Transparency Report"]. Google Inc., 26 February 2018. Retrieved 14 March 2019.</ref> | ||
Revision as of 21:09, 28 March 2019
The right to be forgotten, also commonly known as the right to erasure, is the idea that an individual should have the ability to erase parts of their online identity that include information which is no longer needed for its original processing purpose. This idea arose from individuals who believed that they should be able to control whether or not their information persists online. The primary concern for these individuals is the persistence of information that is damaging to their online image. In the European Union (EU) and Argentina this right has already been implemented with the creation of a law which allows citizens to request that their information is removed from google's search results. The right to be forgotten brings up a number of issues concerning the relationship between access of information and the right to privacy, as well as online anonymity problems.
Contents
History
Before the expansion of the internet and search engines such as Google and Yahoo, the right to be forgotten was essentially unknown. In the Pre-internet era, data was not as easily accessible due to its physical nature and public records were difficult to obtain which lead to "practical obscurity" of people's data. This means that the data is effectively protected due to the practical difficulty to access it.[1] The digitization of records as well as the expansion of digital libraries for search engines allowed for data to become more easily accessible and the right to be forgotten to emerge as an idea. In 2014, a landmark case of Google vs. Costeja made the right to be forgotten a well known concept.
Google v. Costeja
In March of 2010, a resident of Spain named Mario Costeja González filed a complaint against La Vanguardia newspaper due to a few of their online articles published in 1998.[2] When googling his name, Costeja obtained links to two articles from La Vanguardia which contained information about his forced sale of property in order to pay off social security debts.[3] Costeja requested that La Vanguardia remove this information from their site and also requested that Google remove these links from their search results. He believed that the sensitive information about his debts was damaging to his reputation even though those debts had previously been resolved and were no longer relevant.[3]
In July of 2010, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) ruled that La Vanguardia legally had the right to publish this information about Costeja and therefore didn't have to remove it.[2] However, the AEPD upheld the complaint which was directed at Google and ruled that the search engine had the obligation to remove the links to the newspaper articles from their indexes without necessarily erasing the data.
Following this ruling, Google took up claims against the Audiencia Nacional(National High Court of Spain) on the basis that Costeja didn't have the right to erase legally published material.[2] Finally in 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that search engines such as google must uphold the right to erasure. This landmark case resulted in a debate over the types of information that qualify for removal under the guidelines for the right to be forgotten. Ultimately, it lead to the publication of a form by Google which would allow citizens in the EU to request for removal of links that are no longer relevant to their original processing purpose.[4] Google handles the requests on a case by case basis and determines whether or not each request really fits under the guidelines for the right to be forgotten.
Argentina
In Argentina, the lawyer Adolfo Martín Leguizamón Peña was filing similar cases for many celebrities against the search engines Google and Yahoo.[5] These celebrities demanded the removal of certain search results that were linking to photographs of theirs. Most notably, the case of Da Cuhna v. Yahoo and Google in 2009.
In her lawsuit with the lower court, Virginia Da Cuhna of Argentina claimed that search results for her name resulted in links to pornographic websites which were using photographs of her without her permission. Judge Virginia Simari of Buenos Aires ruled in favor of Da Cuhna and claimed that she had a right to control her personal image online and Google and Yahoo were violating that right with their search results and therefore needed to remove links to pornographic sites which contained Da Cuhna's pictures.[5] On appeal a three judge court reversed the lower courts decision on the claim that the search engines could not be held accountable for linking to Da Cuhna's images as Da Cuhna had published them herself on her personal website. Although the judges reversed the decision, Judge Ana María R. Brilla de Serrat argued for the importance of the right to be forgotten along with the right to control information about oneself.[5] These cases helped to set a foundation for the right to be forgotten in Argentina.
United States of America
Currently there are no legal frameworks in the United States protecting the right to be forgotten.
In 2014, a survey conducted by Benenson Strategy Group concluded that 88% of voters in the United States support the creation of a U.S. Law that would allow for citizens to request for the removal of personal information from search results.[6] Although such a large number of voters are in support of the creation of a right to be forgotten law in the U.S., the opposition claims that it would be a direct violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of expression to all U.S. citizens by prohibiting Congress from creating a law that would violate the right to freedom of expression. [7] Advocates against the right to be forgotten in the U.S. claim that allowing individuals to remove some of their personal information online violates the right to freedom of expression of the publisher of that information.
There are currently frameworks in place that allow U.S. citizens to protect themselves from an invasion of privacy. If an individual feels they have experienced a breach in privacy due to their personal information being divulged inappropriately, they can legally request to get that information removed. [8] However, these laws don't encompass the right to be forgotten in the United States as they fail to protect the removal of personal information that was lawfully published online.[8]
In recent years here have been a number of bills proposed concerning the right to be forgotten in the U.S., however they have all been killed or remain pending in Congress.
Case Studies
Nikki Catsouras
In 2006, a girl named Nikki Catsouras from the United States was decapitated in a gruesome car accident.[9] Highway patrol officers who arrived on the scene took photos of the incident as standard procedure calls for, however two of those workers later shared the disturbing photos online. Due to the rapid spread of information online, some of these photographs were eventually discovered by some of the family members of Nikki Catsouras. Nikki's father, Christos Catsouras, attempted to have these images removed from the internet but failed to do so.[9] Since the United States has no law in place for the right to be forgotten, Nikki's photographs will remain on the internet indefinitely.
Google Transparency Report
Google gathered and categorized data about all of the delisting requests which Europeans made from 2014-2017. The infographic below shows in detail the summary of the people who exercised their right to be forgotten as well as the information requested for delisting.[10]
Ethical Issues
According to Moor's Law: "As technological revolutions increase their social impact, ethical problems increase."[11] Due to the availability and ease of access that the internet has provided, the right to be forgotten has arisen as an ethical issue. While the European Union and Argentina have laws set in place protecting the right to be forgotten, the United States and many other countries have no such protections. These differences spark the debate over whether or not each country should create a law for the right to be forgotten. The main ethical issue concerning the right to be forgotten is the clash between the freedom of expression and the right to privacy.
Freedom of Expression v. Right to Privacy
Advocates for the freedom of expression believe that subjects invoke the right to be forgotten simply when their content no longer suits their needs.[12] Furthermore, they claim that citizens who request the removal of information that was lawfully published by a website are directly violating the freedom of expression of that website. When a user removes information about themselves which could hurt their reputation, they are restricting the access of information for the public.[12]
In opposition, advocates for the right to privacy believe that data divulged privately which is made public in some way should be removed immediately as the subject has the right to privacy of their information. Luciano Floridi defines the right to informational privacy as “the freedom from informational interference or intrusion, achieved through a restriction of facts about oneself that are unknown or unknowable.” [13] Thus they believe that the publication of this information is a violation of the right to privacy and therefore subject at hand should have the right to be forgotten without violating the freedom of expression.[14] Due to the case by case nature of the right to be forgotten, the line between the freedom of expression and right to privacy varies with each decision the search engine makes. This thus makes the ethical dilemma more clouded as the various requests for delisting can be very different.
References
- ↑ "Privacy and Public Records" epic.org. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Google Spain SL and Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) and Mario Costeja González. Case C‑131/12. Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber), 13 May 2014. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Thomas Macaulay, "What is the right to be forgotten and where did it come from?. 14 September 2017. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
- ↑ Ignacio Cofone, "Google v. Spain: A Right To Be Forgotten". "15 Chi.-Kent J. Int'l & Comp. L.", 2015. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Edward L. Carter, "Argentina's Right to be Forgotten". Emory International Law Review Volume 27, 2013. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
- ↑ Mario Trujillo, "Public wants 'right to be forgotten' online". Benenson Strategy Group. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
- ↑ "U.S. Constitution-First Amendment". Legal Information Institute. Cornell Law School. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Leticia Bode & Meg Leta Jones, "Ready to forget: American attitudes toward the right to be forgotten". The Information Society, 8 March 2017. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Jeffrey Toobin, "The Solace of Oblivion: In Europe, the right to be forgotten trumps the Internet". Annals of Law, 29 September 2014. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
- ↑ Michee Smith, "Updating our “right to be forgotten” Transparency Report". Google Inc., 26 February 2018. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
- ↑ James H. Moor, "Why we need better ethics for emerging technologies". Ethics and Information Technology (2005) 7:111–119. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Muge Fazlioglu, "Forget me not: the clash of the right to be forgotten and freedom of expression on the Internet". International Data Privacy Law; Oxford Vol. 3, Iss. 3, (Aug 2013): 149 - 157. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
- ↑ Luciano Floridi, The 4th Revolution Chapter 5. Oxford University Press, 2014. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
- ↑ Ivor Shapiro "How the “Right to be Forgotten” Challenges Journalistic Principles". Digital Journalism Volume 5, 2017. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
