In May 2014, the European Court of Justice released a decision that shocked privacy and free speech advocates alike: that all people have the “right to be forgotten.” Put simply, the right to be forgotten is the right to have parts of one’s online presence – articles, images, posts on social media – erased from search engines’ results. Since the decision, Google alone has received over 2.43 million link expungement requests from the EU, with 900 thousand links successfully removed. Yet rendering such a massive amount of information essentially invisible has raised a thorny moral question: does the right to be forgotten protect individual privacy, or does it infringe upon people’s right to know?
It’s easier to grasp the implications of these removals now that Google has released its annual transparency report. Of 650 thousand individual requests, about 90 percent came from minors and private citizens, with the rest coming from government officials, celebrities and law firms. Targets for removal ranged from legal history to news articles to regrettable personal posts. Curiously, only one thousand requesters, likely reputation management firms, took up almost 15 percent of affected links – a sign that people will pay to have a spotless online presence.
More fascinating, however, are the reasons why requests were denied. In a statement explaining why some links remain listed, Google said, “We may decline to delist if we determined that the page contains information which is strongly in the public interest.” A UK man, for instance, was denied fraud report delistings after it was found he was still committing similar crimes, and a man in Spain was refused removal of articles reporting his past involvement with terrorism-linked political parties. Offending links, it seems, are checked thoroughly before permanent delisting, but they still place a heavy burden on the company: the responsibility and power of deciding which information people get to know and which is silenced.
Although Google’s word currently remains final, it is routinely challenged. Two dismissed cases – the defendants of which were convicted of serious banking and communication crimes – recently made accepted appeals at a top English court, claiming that their past actions, however drastic, should not affect their present lives. Google lawyer Anthony White still supports the company’s position, insisting, “[The right to be forgotten] is not a right to rewrite history or a right to tailor your past.”
The UK cases seem to be part of a present trend to expand the right to be forgotten, be it within national lines or out. It’s important to note that the delistings only affect countries in the EU – as of now, delisted links still come up when searched in other countries, including the US. But that may be about to change. Just last year a French court brought a case ordering Google to uphold the right internationally to the European Court of Justice, where it still waits in limbo; this May, a new EU privacy law will make international businesses that retain EU customer data comply with the same right.
Still, in the US at least, the right to be forgotten clashes with some basic aspects of the First Amendment, specifically those prohibiting censorship of accurate and non-private information. AP Government student Regan Breen said, “There are certainly some limitations to the First Amendment, but I don’t think we’ll see anything like the right to be forgotten unless a court case comes up.” So those interested in how the right to be forgotten will affect the US should wait until someone takes legal action. Until then, watch Europe’s battles with Google in the coming months. Only time will tell what the true impact of the right to be forgotten will be.
