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 Opportunity for a fresh start 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 Cons Expose people to danger 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

"...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 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.

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. 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. 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 forgotten-online