‘Right to be forgotten’ across the globe

What could be the possible implications of the ‘right to be forgotten’ expanding from Europe to the rest of the world? One: “forget” requests would be immensely popular. Two: requests would be made to bleach one’s life’s darkest spots – thereby creating a misleadingly clean and exemplary image. Third: noted that one’s request is upheld only in Google’s subdomains (i.e. .co.uk or .fr), quite frankly, feeling hidden and secure by essentially removing a link from myopic search results is only fanciful.

According to EuropeanNews, on the first day of engagement in ‘right to be forgotten,’ 12,000 requests were made to be “forgotten” in Google. Since then, Google saw that the numbers only increased. The ‘right to be forgotten’ is based on the context from European Union’s Data Protection Reform: “[…] reflects the claim of an individual to have certain data deleted so that third persons can no longer trace them.” Whenever a person feels something misrepresents or invokes harm to his/her reputation, he/she can request it to be removed. Unfortunately, the same sentence doesn’t exist in laws of the United States – thereby giving Europe the higher ground in terms of legislative respect in one’s privacy.

In the recent months, Article 29 Working Party (WP29) has prepared a set of guidelines to remove “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive” search results. However, similar to #3 (“noted that […] myopic search results is only fanciful”), WP29 had pointed out that simply “de-listing” search results in a small scale doesn’t “satisfactorily guarantee the rights” of a person in a ruling. Therefore, WP29 made a request to remove results in a global scale (www.google.com), in addition to 28 EU country domains (i.e. Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, etc.).

In a reflection of this, I realized that European Union, in some ways, casts a different light in the term “freedom.” All the derivatives and context of “freedom” can be expressed in different ways (i.e. Freedom of Speech) – however, there exists a fundamental difference between how the United States and European countries tackles its’ interpretation. United States does not enforce its’ freedoms. Instead, with each instance of a controversy, a loose interpretation becomes more delineated (i.e. Elonis v. United States, 13-983). In the European Union, a party is made (i.e. WP29) to enforce and challenge the single meaning of its declaration: “an individual to have certain data deleted so that third persons can no longer trace them.” In a way, I see that freedom is made more powerful and clear when they are elaborated in detail – not loosely hinted.