The right to be forgotten: A path to the future

Earlier this year European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said that internet users had a “right to be forgotten” — the idea being that anyone should be able to delete all the data they have online at any time, except in cases where there is a legitimate interest in maintaining information in a database.

According to the new EU policy, the “right to be forgotten” simply “would allow people to request that their information be erased and not disseminated online.”

Research fellow Pere Simon Castellano from the University of Girona reckons that this new right is key for the future law in the new technological landscape.

Castellano, speaking at the Korea Communications Conference, believes the “unstoppable rise of the internet” and communications technologies have “gradually introduced changes to our social life”. He reckons these changes need to be mirrored in the “effectiveness of law in a 2.0 or 3.0 world”.

The EU proposal points out that the individuals “shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data relating to them and abstention from further dissemination of such data.”

The right to be forgotten allows individuals:

• The right to silence on past events in life such as crimes for which the person has later been exonerated or full rehabilitated into society.
• The right to delete our personal data on the internet even when we have given our consent in the past.
• The right to receive a compensation for damage caused by releasing illegitimately the information which contains personal data.
• The right to anonymise personal data in public sentences.
• The right to object to some treatments of personal data, i.e. the right to order search engines to delete out-of-date and inaccurate information.

Castellano proposes a model of Pseudo-Anonymity online as a solution. He argues that though online communications are “inherently traceable”, the identity of the user doesn’t have to be. Users, he says, should become “truly anonymous”.

He reckons that by introducing “forgetting” to smart technology, users can maintain some form of anonymity online. He believes also introducing the idea of expiration dates to personal data through “Digital Privacy Rights Infrastructures” users may be able to control how much and where their data is shared.

“Forgetting technology not only helps protect user rights and allows companies to offer better products and service,” says Castellano.