The EU is currently proposing laws that would require web site and service owners to delete individuals’ personal information from their records. The new laws aim to uphold a person’s “right to be forgotten.”
How do you feel about your right to be forgotten? To be honest, until I read this article, I didn’t realize being forgotten was a right. This news seems to reflect an intriguing new stage in our restlessly evolving relationship with technology.
Remember Me
Historically, humans have striven to be remembered. For millennia, individuals have spent their lives working to leave an inspiring, respectable legacy. Friends of mine who are parents cite that desire for legacy as one of the reasons why they have children. From the Egyptian pyramids to biological, astronomical and other scientific names that sport their discoverers’ own monikers, evidence abounds that many humans’ greatest desire is to leave their marks on the world.
Some argue that a key difference between humans and other animals is our memory. As a collective, we know that memory is precious, rich and often fleeting.
But technology breaks all the barriers humans face in the race to maintain recollection. Data can be stored indefinitely. And while previously web users were more concerned with saving data — backing up systems, distributing that storage across media and locations — and with organizing the information we had to allow easy, swift access to those digital memories, clearly, the tide is turning.
The question of a right to privacy seems to be less one of corporate data assets than it is about personal privacy. According to the report, this EU proposal was sparked by the fact that social networking sites failed to remove personal data that users themselves had supposedly deleted from the sites.
Yet the reason users are concerned about the preservation of that information — the perpetuation of a less-than-venerable online legacy — appears primarily to reflect a fear of our being poorly assessed by corporations and other bodies we may want to join.
Reputation Management
If you read about furor over a copyright complaint against cookery magazine Cooks Source last week, you know that reputations can be undone in an instant online. We watch the blunders of big players, and follow the online commentary that ensues — and while we may thrill to see the fat cats fail, we all know that next week, it could be us. HR could all too easily find those pictures of us acting up at a party, and then what?
In the past, we could rely on the frailty of human memory to dim the memories of our indiscretions. But now we have to fight to keep our legacy “pure” — to maintain, if you like, the consistency of our personal brands not just online, but in the world at large. We happily used technology to create virtual versions of ourselves. Now we’re finding those virtual versions more robust than we ever expected.
The good things we may have done, personally or professionally, don’t necessarily compete with the achievements of our peers. Perhaps they don’t make for such entertaining or popular photos. In the world of the Virtual Me, we may find it’s our less socially acceptable behavior, as depicted and recorded online, that differentiates us from others: job candidates, colleagues and contacts.
Mixing Business and Pleasure
When all is said and done, we own our personal data. Even if we provide an organization our details, the organization doesn’t own that information. The privacy laws that countries all over the world have developed are a testament to our agreement on this point.
So why do we need to assert our “right to be forgotten”? According to the article:
“Viviane Reding, Europe’s rights commissioner, said the world of data protection had been transformed by popular new technologies in the 15 years since data protection legislation was last amended.
‘Internet users must have effective control of what they put online and be able to correct, withdraw or delete it at will,’ she said.”
While no one disagrees with this principle, the fact is that people will remember us for who we are and what we do. If these proposed laws pass, they sound like they’ll be there to protect us from our reputations not among web users on the other side of the world, but among the people we know — or will meet — face-to-face, in our own towns and neighborhoods.
In that case, peoples’ online reputations are only part of the equation: we’ll have to hope our words and actions offline don’t speak too negatively for themselves.
What about you: are you worried that your “right to be forgotten” is being infringed?
Image by stock.xchng user Axonite.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):
- Enabling the Web Work Revolution
- Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking?
- Social Media in the Enterprise
I think “the right to be forgotten” is more about the right to ensure that you have control over your information being “forgotten” if you so choose.
I don’t think anyone could or would argue that a corporation has the right to retain data that you willingly gave that you now want to remove. Facebook is the easiest example, obviously. If I upload a picture to facebook, and then I decided I want to delete it, Facebook has no right to keep it even though it is not displayed. There should be no backup of it. The relationship is symbiotic – Facebook exists because we use it, and we use it because it behooves us, but that relationship changes when Facebook decides to keep data without telling us (or without giving us the choice).
To cut to the chase, I think the EU proposal is intended for cases where adolescents stupidly post material about themselves online that they later in their lives wish they hadn’t. Or people no longer wanting to be associated with something now that they’ve grown wiser. You get the picture.
I think the proposal is a welcome step, although, of course, it places quite a burden to the owners/operators of information-collecting sites.
I’m sure, though, that the issue won’t be resolved without a horde of lawyers earning a lot from it…
“If these proposed laws pass, they sound like they’ll be there to protect us from our reputations not among web users on the other side of the world, but among the people we know — or will meet — face-to-face, in our own towns and neighborhoods.”
in the days before endless data, you moved to a new city where few people knew you and started over.
now you move to a new city and hope no one searches your name in google or comes across those photos of you that your friends have tagged online.
you may no longer be a neo-Nazi, for example. but there’s your cached blog post singing Hitler’s praises and “down with jews!” in all caps. at what point, if ever, do you get to say “that’s not me any more”? do you ever have the right to start over? should you have that right?
This is just another way of saying, “the right to be left alone” which was identified as a means of defining the right to privacy or, more properly against improper search and seizure– and that is identified in the Constitution. Certain public figures give up the right by putting themselves in the public eye, but the web kinda makes it fuzzy as to who is public and who isn’t. Basically it means anyone who makes a living in the public eye is a public figure, but just because you post something doesn’t mean you are a public figure.
I think it is also the responsibility of the consumer of the information to take it with a grain of salt. People grow, people change. Before judging someone on a comment made in 1996, how about talking with them?
There are some interesting and distorted perspectives happening when we “Google” someone’s name. Old, long forgotten information is suddenly front-and-center, at least for the person doing the search. They can be looking at information that is as new as yesterday or as old as the Internet and not realize the difference.
just as we have the right or willingness to remove a tattoo or piercing,for employment purposes or because we did it under the umbrella of stupidity…we should have, at least, the choice, of being “forgotten”. we will ALL run under that umbrella at a point (or 2 or 50) in our lives and need an escape plan. believe me, you WILL all agree…one day.
In addition to managing my image on the Internet, I want entities who store my health and financial information to guard my data. I do not want my social security number and birth date to be available to strangers. I believe that my information is probably currently stored in electronic form in locations where it is not safe.
[...] Laidlaw at GigaOm reports that Web Users Seek the “Right to Be Forgotten”. This is a very interesting article about privacy, reputation management, and the right to have [...]
Removal of outdated or simply unwanted posts is fine, but any web page or graphic can be saved by any surfer. Once posted, the potential is to be never forgotten, regardless of any effort an individual may make.
_aleph_