Since a Court of Justice ruling in May, Europeans have had the right to ask Internet search engines like Google to remove links from their name to information that is inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant or excessive. Popularly, this has been dubbed the “right to be forgotten.”
It’s an important way to protect privacy in the digital age. Google and the other search engines like Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo should, if they care about users’ privacy as they claim, extend this important protection to Americans.
New attention was focused on the right the day before Thanksgiving when Europe’s 28 privacy regulators said it should be applied not only to European Internet domains like Google.de, Google.fr, Google.ie and Google.co.uk, but to Google’s primary domain, Google.com, that we in the United States all use.
It’s important to understand what the right to be forgotten actually does. It is not censorship. It simply restores an element of “privacy by obscurity” to the digital age, restoring a balance between the “right to know” and privacy. The original published article is not removed or altered; it remains on the Internet. The link from a person’s name may be removed, but the article can still be accessed using other search terms.
Importantly, removal is not automatic. There needs to be a balance between the individual’s privacy and public’s right to know in making a decision to remove a link, the court ruled.
In a transparency report issued in October, Google said not all requests were granted. The Internet giant said it had received a total of 146,357 removal requests involving 498,737 URLs. Google said it had completed processing 409,897 of those URLs, removing 171,183, or 41.8 percent, and retaining 238,714 or 58.2 percent. That shows, I think, that a sensible balance between privacy and the right to know can be found.
Americans apparently support the right to be forgotten. A poll by Software Advice, Inc. in early September found that 61 percent of Americans "believe some version of the right to be forgotten is necessary." Thirty-nine percent "want a European-style blanket right to be forgotten, without restrictions." And 47 percent were "concerned that 'irrelevant' search results can harm a person’s reputation."
Before the digital age, if I did something young and foolish, when I was young and foolish, people forgot about it as I matured. While the details might exist somewhere in a paper archive, you needed some effort and motivation to dig them up. Contrast that to today: All the information that once would have been generally forgotten over time – and likely is really no longer relevant to who I now am – is available with a few clicks of a mouse. The natural protection afforded to privacy by obscurity has disappeared.
I remember as a young newspaper reporter going to different jurisdictions where public records were kept and putting together background information on an individual, usually someone seeking public office. But I didn’t look up most people’s files because there was no real public interest. Thus, in the past, most people’s privacy was reasonably protected because of the effort necessary to gather “public” information about them. You could do it, but why would you?
Before the digital age and the Internet a balance between the need for public records and personal privacy was maintained by the difficulty in gathering information from disparate and distant files as well as the tendency of humans to forget. Google and its search algorithms don’t allow that now. We need to focus on what this sea change means to society and how to deal with it.
The right to be forgotten offers a clear path forward to help protect our privacy in the digital age. Americans deserve the same right to be forgotten that is now being invoked in Europe. Companies like Google that repeatedly claim to care about users’ privacy should be ashamed that they are not treating people on both sides of the Atlantic the same way.
About John Simpson is a consumer advocate for Consumer Watchdog and the director of the organization’s Privacy Project.
