The House Believes in the Right to be Forgotten

The right to be forgotten is a right to have one's digital footprint erased from the internet. This consists of erasing information about oneself and about one's activity from the internet, including photos, videos, blogposts, comments, internet searches etc.

The debate was sparked by claims that people have a right to manage their personal information however they see fit, especially if that information is damaging their reputation. Removing information from the internet can be difficult, even if the material has been deleted. For example, deleted photos and videos can still be stored in internet archives or social media search engines. The issue achieved such magnitude that the European Union has been considering making the right to be forgotten into law [1]. The law is said to be of particular help to young people in deleting embarrassing material, but would exclude information of relevance to public interest, such as medical or police records. This would require firms that control data to erase personal data (including links or copies of the data held by the third parties) that was made public without legal justification on demand from users [2]. The legislation needs to be approved by the European Parliament to enter into force. Though it appears that from a purely technical point of view the Right to be forgotten cannot be enforced, it is nevertheless possible to work with different actors in the society to enforce this rule to a reasonable extent, e.g. by preventing unwanted collection of information [3]. 

1] BBC News 'EU proposes 'right to be forgotten' by internet firms', 23 January 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16677370

[2] Data guidance, ‘EU@: right to be forgotten is now the right to erasure’, http://www.dataguidance.com/news.asp?id=2119, 22 October 2013

 [3] European Union Agency for network and information security, ‘The right to be forgotten – between expectations and practice’ http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/identity-and-trust/library/deliverables/the-right-to-be-forgotten, 20 November 2012