European Union citizens have a new fundamental right: the right to be forgotten. In this report, we look at what this means for us.
Mario Costeja Gonzalez helped bring about the new EU rules after a lengthy legal battle with search engine Google.
Mario was annoyed because every time he googled his name, the search results brought up an old story about the forced sale of his property. He asked Google to de-link the archives from his name.
His fight with the internet giant took six years. In 2014 the European Court of Justice published a landmark ruling on the right to be forgotten.
“Google just ignored me,” Gonzalez told Euronews. “As Europeans we couldn’t do anything about it. We had to to open a door for change. When facing a problem with a search engine, as an ordinary European, you had to send a request to the United States. It is difficult to face giants like Google and their powerful lobbying groups. The old situation was not a normal one: big technology companies and search engines behaved like they were in a lawless world, they just did what they wanted to do. There was a real need for a law.”
Interesting opinion/brief from EFF on the French/EU “right to be forgotten” #law: https://t.co/nGtPKrRGGY #Privacy #TheInternetNeverForgets pic.twitter.com/KtzbSLp6gk— FennelAurora InfoSec (FennelAurora) December 21, 2016
Smartphone penetration and social media sharing have created an almost constant stream of personal updates and photos.
The European Union’s data protection reform strengthens individual rights, and protects personal information regardless of where it is sent, processed or stored – even outside the EU. When a European citizen no longer wants personal data to be processed, it can be deleted.
In Madrid we met Mario’s lawyer, Joaquin Munoz Rodriguez, who pointed out some problems: the right to be forgotten applies to ordinary Europeans, such as Mario, but not to public figures. But what exactly is the definition of a “public figure?” And how many years have to pass by before information is considered to be “obsolete?”
The right to be forgotten has been approved by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. It will come into force next year.
Euronews asked Rodriguez how the rights of individual European citizens be strengthened after May 2018.
“The new European regulation has widened the concept of the right to be forgotten,” he explained. “It will apply not only to search engines – but also to other internet platforms. All users will be able to ask the internet companies to delete information that is not accurate or that is obsolete or whatsoever. Moreover, those websites have to communicate those changes to the search engines, so that they too can delete or block any remaining links to the deleted content.”
Cyberbullying – a growing problem
Two out of three Europeans are concerned about not having complete control over their web presence.
While sharing private information with friends may
