iRights Campaign: Battling for the Right to be Forgotten
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| mashable.com |
Personal experimentation is an essential part of childhood development, yet the internet never forgets and never corrects,’ says iRights. ‘It can possess an infinite memory of each individual and all of their online actions.
[...] Errors of judgement, unhappy experiences and attitudes that were the product of immaturity are saved on the internet long after they have faded from the memory of friends and family. This can make it extremely difficult for young people to get away from their past experience and move on.
[...] it is inappropriate for a third party, commercial or otherwise, to own, retain or process the data of minors without giving them the opportunity to retract it or to correct misinformation.
Take Spanish third division winger Julio Rey, for instance, who was on the brink of joining Deportivo La Coruña last week, only to have his career-changing move dashed when the La Liga side dug up an old tweet from 2012 – when Rey was only 17 – in which he insulted the club. Deportivo cancelled the transfer there and then.
A report from UK online reputation
experts Igniyte shows that 40% of their requests come from individuals rather than
corporations looking to manage their online profile. Another 40% wanted help
removing incorrect or defamatory information. 21% were the parents or families
of young people concerned about their online reputation, while 16% of all new
clients were looking for support with ‘right to be forgotten’ requests.
Despite being criticised for allowing criminals to hide their past from the public, over a third of requests were from crime victims who just wanted to protect their online privacy – not from criminals.
Commenting on the findings of the
report and the iRights campaign, Igniyte’s Managing Partner Simon Wadsworth
said: ‘For the iRights campaign to be a success, it needs to be backed by the
main search engines and social platforms who tend to house the content that
young people post online. Further legislation is required to protect them and
practical steps taken to ensure children and adults are educated in how things
are published, who can see them and what can be removed.’
In a landmark May 2014 ruling, Google
Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González, the Court of Justice of the European
Union found that individuals have the right to ask Google to remove search
results about them that are out of date or inflammatory. Google has now
released a transparency report on ‘right to be forgotten’ requests which shows
that they have received 290,000 requests and evaluated over one million URLs
for removal in total since the ruling came into effect. 41.3% of requests were
granted, according to the report. However, those that are deleted are only
removed from its European websites such as Google.de and Google.fr – not from Google.com.
Last month, the French national
data protection authority, CNIL, demanded that Google should extend the ‘right to
be forgotten’ to all versions of Search globally, not just in Europe. Google said
that it ‘respectfully’ disagrees with the CNIL’s authority on the issue. The
company’s global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, said in a blog post that the
French regulator’s request is a ‘troubling development that risks serious
chilling effects on the web.
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| google.com |
‘While the right to be forgotten
may now be the law in Europe, it is not the law globally,’ he added. The CNIL said it
would look into Google’s appeal and make a decision in two months on whether or not to accept it.
Aaron Waterhouse
Aaron Waterhouse
Aaron is a recent English graduate from Durham University who is now working as a content writer intern. An enthusiastic traveller, he hopes to become a journalist and report from around the world. Follow him @AaronAtSMF
iRights Campaign: Battling for the Right to be Forgotten
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Friday, July 31, 2015
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Reviewed by Unknown
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Friday, July 31, 2015
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