Try as we might, we cannot always control the content about us that gets uploaded to the internet. From our own mistakes to blackmail to a poor judgment call by a friend or relative, content exposing us made public on the internet extends beyond the right to privacy.
For this reason, the EU passed a decree declaring the right to be forgotten on the internet. This is all well and good, but can it be enforced? This is yet to be seen.
In the meantime, protect yourself. Do not post incriminating or embarrassing content about yourself on the internet and be wary of situations in which other people may do it for you. This can be hard with so many smart phone floating around. Stand up for your right to privacy now so you don’t have to be forgotten later.
Since the advent of the internet, people have been cautioned to be careful about what they post online. This warning has not stopped many people from posting incriminating – or simply embarrassing – material about themselves and about others online. In 2014, the European Union made a decree that people have the right to be forgotten online. This is different than the right to privacy because it applies to material that had been previously made available to the public. This means that people have the right to have material on the internet about them buried and filtered out of search engines. Just this year, Google has complied with this decree, but not without a good deal of kicking and screaming.
Recently this year, Google has pledged to bury content that falls under the right to be forgotten. At least, from search engines viewed from countries that approved the right to be forgotten decree. Before this pledge, Google claimed that the right to be forgotten equated to censorship, so while they would filter out search engine results in the country of the claim, they would not do so for search engines in other countries – including other countries that approved this decree. Google claimed that it could not enforce this law worldwide. Canada and France fought back.
First, Canada demanded that Google not only remove right to privacy content from Canadian subsidiary search engines, but from search engines worldwide. When Google responded that this was censorship and that Canadian law did not extend beyond its borders, Canadian courts replied that Google censors content worldwide already, such as imagery of child abuse. Then, in June of 2015, France demanded that Google remove right to be forgotten content from all search engines and not just French search engines.
Google has yet to agree to filter out material worldwide, but has agreed to do so for search engines in countries that approved the right to be forgotten decree. This is unlikely to be satisfactory for countries such as Canada and France. European privacy regulators, including French data protection authority CNIL are already looking into this new proposal by Google and are likely to have some contentions.