Argumentativeessay (2)

“Right to be forgotten”1

Argumentative Essay:

“Right to be forgotten”

Ricardo Isai Ayala

Jorge Luis Imperial

MeiZhen Li

Luis Octavio Lomeli

Luis Daniel Orozco

Elsa del Carmen Serna

CityUniversity of Seattle


Table of contents

Introduction..................................................................................................................................3

Thesis Statement...........................................................................................................................4

The initial idea..............................................................................................................................5

Why the Right to Be Forgotten matters...................................................................................10

Social Responsibility................................................................................................................15

Ethics and Moral........................................................................................................................20

Impact in the U.S........................................................................................................................25

Facebook Image Policies..........................................................................................................31

Conclusion.................................................................................................................................37

Reference List............................................................................................................................38


Introduction

This is a team argumentative essay where everyone reviews the subject in

matter from a different approach but at the same time supporting with their own

arguments the same thesis statement.

The project has a very organized format, starting off with the way of work, each

member’s responsibilities, and thesis statement, that is like the whole focus of the

essay. After that follows everyone’s argumentative essay, that got together forming a

serie of logical chapters that follows undoubtedly the thesis statement described in the

section before.

The subject of discussion here is the famous ‘Right to be forgotten’, that is the

right of having the personal choice of asking to delete their own information from a

search engine or secondhand party. But this only have been implemented in the

Europian Union.

The whole argument of this integrated essay shows support to the ‘Right to be forgotten’

and why it should be enforced not only in Europe but the rest of the world. Starting off

with an explanation of the initial idea, why is it so important, why it matters, the

responsibility society needs, whether if the actions origibated from the lack of this right

is a morally and ethically acceptable behavior, about facebook and their image policies

and finally, how has this right impacted in the United States of America.


The right to be forgotten

Thesis Statement

While people get accustomed to share their information to the internet, companies

acquire data from the private lives of their clients as they upload them to data storage

centers across the world. The European Union is pushing for a “right to be forgotten”

that entitles its citizens with the to demand said companies to delete their personal data

from their Internet databases if they so desire. This is a concept that should be pressed

on further and extended beyond the limits of Europe. The business world must ponder

how they deal with this issue, whether or not their ambition should trump over this right

for privacy which the citizens of the Internet should have the power to exercise.


The initial idea

A human’s memory can be good but not eternal and it is erased when one

passes away, even if you think you have an outstanding memory, the amount of

information that can be hold is limited. We have a short and long term memory and

even if you always win at memorandum, it is not necessarily true you remember what

you had for breakfast the first Sunday of January two years ago, and you have to admit

it would be sort of creepy someone did knew this information about you. But this is what

we have come to create, a world wide web that does not forget a single detail you have

given.

The amount of information that is available on the internet is unbelievable, 300

hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, that means that in two days the

uploads sums up a person lifetime. From the moment we understood and started using

the web, we grabbed on like a powerful tool but now we are realizing only how much of

our own power we have given.

“Information used to propagate slowly, pooling and collecting in some places but

not others. Now it propagates instantly and evenly, everywhere at once. The past is

supposed to fade and blur, but the Internet keeps our entire lives relentlessly in focus,

for everyone, forever.” (Time, 2014, n.p.)

If you really think about it, the thought of this does not sound so good, forever

starts to feel like a long time for mistakes to be remembered, and everyone seems like a

lot of people to share your phone number with, and lawyer Mario Costeja González

thought the same not too long ago. According to Lev Grossman Time article, in March


5, 2010 he lodged a complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency against a

newspaper called “La Vanguardia”. The reason for this is twelve years earlier,

González’s house had been auctioned off to pay his social security debts, and the

newspaper had ran a short article about it. The article was accurate, but González felt it

was no longer relevant to his life. He was not comfortable nor happy that it came up in

Google´s search, so he added Google Spain and dragged Google Inc. to the complaint

for good measure.

The complaint against “La Vanguardia” asking to alter or suppress the

information related to Gonzalez was dismissed, but surprisingly the complaint against

Google asking to remove the article from its search results did went thru.

This is where the real story starts, Google took the case all the way to Spain’s

National High Court and battled what it seemed like an implausible case, the Court

turned for advice to the highest legal authority in the European Union, The Court of

Justice in Luxembourg and on May, 13 contrary to the expectations, the Court stayed

with the original decision, concluding that a person should be able to demand a search

engine to remove links with the ground that the information may be prejudicial, and with

this endorsed a new right, that is being called “the right to be forgotten”.

This is truly a moment that will reshape the rights of the virtual citizens, after

spending untold millennia looking for ways to be remembered by posterity, now there is

a fight for the right to be forgotten. It sounds harsh but it is the truth. Not everyone

asked to be remembered forever, and even so, how you want to be remembered and

who do you want to hold a memory of you, should be a personal decision or at least one

that involves the person’s criteria.


The brand new legislation states that “Individuals have the right to ask search

engines to remove links with personal information about them if the information is

inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive”. (European Commission, n.d., p. 3) The

down side is, this legislation has only been accepted in the European Union, this means

only 10% of the world population has the right to be forgotten, that seems rather unfair,

according to the 8th article of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone

has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and correspondence”.

It is understood as private life the respect of confidential information as well as the right

to control the dissemination of information about one's private life. What kind of control

we really have on what is posted about our lives. Is this really happening or is it just an

illusion where we think we have the control when we delete information or change the

privacy settings.

The social media and source engines have taken control over the information we

have given and they never planned to forget it, but the power this gives to this engines

is terrifying, we trust for the websites to guard our information, and sometimes, try to

delete accounts of services you no longer use, but this information is in their database

forever.

From the individual's point of view deleting information does not sound

extraordinary and hard to achieve, we have all pressed the delete button on our

commuter, how hard can it really be? But there is no secret this has not been approved

worldwide there have been statements, from important news sources like The New York

Times editorial board that came out against it saying that it “could undermine press

freedoms and free speech.”


It can be understandable, critics say it is hard to determine where one man's data

end and another's begin. But all of these information and complaints are coming from

sources that benefit from having and saving our information, they what to know what we

shop, where we travel, where we live, if we want their catalog sent to us. The new

legislation is actually not deleting any information, it is not censorship, no one is pulping

the original information just the links to them, at least for now, it feels like a strong start,

causing media to talk, but it really just is a minimum attempt of recovering what was

ours in the first place.

It is embarrassing that the current data protection laws date form 1995, when in

1993 the internet carried only 1% of all telecommunicated information and on 2012 that

figure risen to more than 97% (Reding, 2012, n.p.). Constitutions change to adapt why

this remains the same knowing that the growth and impact have been exponential form

the day it started.

You only have 90 days to cash a check before it becomes invalid, articles issued

before 1990 become outdated, useless, why put due dates around our everyday task

and make information lose their importance but hold on to databases forever, why not

put an expiration date on the information saved, no one wants to open a bottle of yogurt

that expired 10 years ago, nor should it be kept for so long.

Google announced that a few days after the ruling was accepted, it received over

50,000 requests for articles to be removed from search results remembering this only

apply for the European Union. Even assuming this request may not be from 50,000

separate individuals it is a decent amount of people, it clearly shows that there is a great

demand to be forgotten.


Europe will set the global standards. But other countries' privacy rules matter too.

China and India will soon have more people online than Europe and America have

citizens. And let us remember that there is no barriers on the internet, no political

divisions, we are all part of a community, and the countries should understand this

double nationality and consider this new law.

We should fear for the generations to come, the ones that were born texting, it

sure is worrying because now younger and younger people are using social media, and

they tend to make mistakes, a lot of them all the time, but as everyone they learn from

them, but with smartphones in almost everybody's hands, those mistakes may never be

able to be forgotten if rulings like this are not approved everywhere.

The Court of Justice decision has reminded us that we don’t necessarily have to

accommodate ourselves to technology; we can demand that technology adapt itself to

us. In a way it’s too late for González: no one’s ever going to forget about that real

estate auction now but his point stands: the past isn’t what it used to be. But maybe it

should be.


Why the Right to Be Forgotten matters

The right to be forgotten could mean a significant change as to how Internet laws

and users behave, for it would mean that no government, organization or third party

would be able to track and register/store your private information without your consent.

Everyone has a right to privacy: no one likes being spied on or having their

information, images and other data being distributed without their consent. Also, one

never knows that when even if such information gets taken down from, say Facebook, it

does not actually get erased or taken down permanently, for it will be forever stored in

their servers, just like the user innocently agreed to when accepting the terms of

service, and one cannot also disregard the possibility that someone has stored personal

information of others in their own computer or downloaded images that are now stored

in their hard drive; Even if information is erased on the surface of things, there will

always remain a copy or traces of it in the web.

The right to be forgotten would ensure that such a right to privacy is upheld for

the people of the internet, giving them the option to actually share whatever and

whichever content they want to without being bound to terms of service or some other

form of “contract”; People would be free to decide whether they want their information to

remain in the databases of the many different pages, companies, corporations, search


engines and websites for everyone else to see and know or not, and which type or what

stays on the servers and databases as well.

Still, this so called right to be forgotten is a double edged sword: some other

important points to consider are the possible threats that it could cause if taken

advantage of in the wrong way, for, to give an example, criminals could choose to wipe

out their personal information and of committed or possible crimes in the future. This

would create a great cover for criminals who wish to remain unknown and undercover in

the Internet, which could cause some serious trouble if adeptly taken advantage of.

Even so, while some may think of this as troubling, one must remember that

things such as criminal lists and records exist, and that the corresponding authorities

would definitely do something about suspicious activity if they receive a report from a

website or another user, so staying in the dark would be actually as hard as it is without

this law. Surely, the most cunning ones could get away with it, but things would mostly

remain as secure as they are right now.

As good as the right to be forgotten may sound for almost everyone, it must also

be noted that opposing opinions exist and that equally opposing laws are trying to make

their way into the congress and senate: laws which would greatly affect the way in

which the internet is structured and how its users would use it.


Internet activists have managed to stop laws that would greatly affect all of the

users on the Internet, such as CISPA and SOPA, and have also won cases such as Net

Neutrality (the right for no discrimination in which information is given to whom, giving

no preference to those who are willing to pay more for it), but right now, a new threat

called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has risen, which to begin with is being

negotiated under total secrecy by just a few bunch of congressmen of the United States

government. Very few people have actually had the chance to see just portions of what

the text says, but the public at large has been left in the dark.

What is known, though, is that the TPP would trample any and all sovereignty of

the people of the affected countries, for if the public has not had any chance to read

what is in the pact itself, the ones that have actually gotten to negotiate it are

companies. Now, how does this affect the internet and the right to be forgotten? The

fact that this “trade agreement” also covers topics such as intellectual property rights is

what greatly affects it. Companies would be able to bypass any and all possible normal

legislative processes to push in their own regulations if they claim to be affected by

sloppy copyright enforcement.

“The real danger lies in the way that this agreement subverts the sovereignty of

nations. The TPP would create a system of shadowy trade tribunals which would allow

companies to override and nullify laws in any member country.” (SCG, 2015)


It would trample on any and all form of democracy known to not only the Internet,

but a great part of the planet as well. This is when laws such as the right to be forgotten

come into play. While it cannot do much to stop the TPP as a whole, it would at least

guarantee the people’s privacy and safety from corporations to use as they want to (any

kind of manipulation or business advantages, etc.). Without such a law, the Internet as a

whole would stand defenseless against any possible information and security threats

and manipulations, enterprises and governments would be able to spy and monitor on

anyone at any given time, for any kind of information they wanted to obtain and they

would have legal measures and justifications for it.

Your information would be sold and distributed without your consent and

knowledge of it, and eventually, looking into a not-so distant future, people would

become a sort of product or cattle, for the ever-vigilant government or internet would

always have their eyes on them, dictating what is wrong and what is right, exposing and

displaying only the information most convenient for them to show to the masses;

George Orwell’s worst nightmare could potentially become a reality if corporations and

governments are left to do whatever they want to.

That is why the people as a whole need to get informed of the possible threats to

their security, rights and privacy, so they may rally together to deter advances that are

in the best interests for the corporate world. The RTBF would certainly pose a

resistance and show the people’s discontent with how information and data is being

handled.


Bringing into effect the right to be forgotten to America would mean a great

change for the people and the Internet as a whole, for as stated before, privacy and

security are definitely two of the most important and currently controversial topics on the

Internet nowadays, for if such a law were to be passed, you could rest assured that at

least those rights would be upheld for the people, and that no one would store,

distribute or share your private information, data and pictures without your consent.

The right to be forgotten would prove to be a means to with which the people of

the internet would be able to protect themselves and their information from companies

and other malicious people, as well as a measure against prohibitive and subjective

laws, such as the TPP, which could greatly endanger privacy and freedom over the

Internet.


Social Responsibility

There has been concern about the power that corporations hold with the

information and data of the customers that use their platforms. However, an issue that

does not seem to resonate as much is the role of the individual and businesses in a free

society. More specifically, how consumers dictate what the market offers through

demand and this case what corporations should do with the right to be forgotten.

Observing gigantic transnational corporations accumulate the data of millions of

users from around the world may be daunting for citizens that care about their privacy

but these entities surge and thrive on their customers consuming their product or using

their service, else they would not grow on that scale and sink on their maintenance

expenses.

“[...] as the United States debates the precarious state of privacy rights in light of

the NSA's domestic surveillance programs, American law could benefit from the

underlying principle of the ‘right to be forgotten’ -- dignity.” (Chow, 2013, para. 5)

The right to be forgotten cannot be debated without at least making mention to

the state of affairs on the United States after former CIA contractor Edward Snowden

left his position and American soil to expose to the media detailed files regarding

massive internet and phone surveillance conducted by American intelligence to not only

its citizens but also those of numerous foreign countries. (BBC News, 2014)

The reason for mentioning this incident that merits its own essay is that at the

moment the right to be forgotten is enforced by the European Union. While not


responsible for the aggressive monitoring of personal communication, it is still a

governmental body, even if composed by multiple countries, that may also conduct

civilian surveillance as well.

Trusting the same government that decisively collects private data from its own

innocent people into honoring the right to be forgotten and enforcing it is naive at best.

Even so, the European Union may change its stance on surveillance and data collection

at any moment or possibly hide information that was supposedly taken down from the

company’s servers.

Enforcing the right to be forgotten is better than letting private data circulate the

internet, surely, but there is more to be done to ensure that the fundamental right to

private life is being respected by both government and companies alike. And this is why

active participation in the topic can lead to more effective results than expected.

There are many companies that live on selling personal data to advertising and

other uses but due to competition alternatives surge that disclose how they use the data

generated by their users and how they protect their anonymity. Mozilla, mostly known

for its internet browser Firefox, as an example keeps a privacy blog with updates

regarding the company’s use of data, privacy issues and their efforts to keep that

information secure from any vulnerability. (Mozilla, n.d.)

By opting to use their products and services they keep growing and encouraging

the competition to analyse their model, adapting what the customer likes and come with

something better to offer. By supporting companies that actually respect the privacy of

their customers and their personal data the right to be forgotten is less needed and may

eventually become a backup tool rather than the main tool to enforce online privacy.


On the other hand, by letting businesses get away with selling data by not

boycotting or stop using their services these not only disregard the right to be forgotten

by also compete and displace companies that do care about the privacy of their users.

Facebook, as one of the companies with the largest amount of user data stored and

utilized, is still a leader on the social media market but according to statistics that may

not be the case in the near future, due to several reasons other than its business model.

(Meadan, n.d.)

Just as the latter, privacy-friendly companies can exist due to the decision of the

customers, so can the former, invasive companies cease to or rather force them to

adapt to the demands of their users and take online privacy more seriously.

While Europeans may think they are protected by the ruling in favor of the right to

be forgotten, such luxury is absent in the United States, one of the major hubs of online

traffic. Other countries are also at the mercy of American jurisdiction over the data that

flows through their infrastructure. And even more, American based companies are some

of the largest in terms of personal information gathered from worldwide users.

It is also of concern, however, as the right to be forgotten is enforced relevant

information to the public may be censored by abusing the legislation and invade the

freedom of speech. (Maslen, 2014)

With such issue present, one must consider that even freedom of speech has its

limits, especially when concerning the personal information of others. An individual may

be responsible of his information but if someone else leaks it into the Internet it

becomes a situation that involves both rights. Criteria should be established, since there

are both private and public information that should be managed appropriately.


Regardless, establishing the responsibility in the consumer is one thing but how

can that become an agent of change in the privacy area? Education is the key

component behind the issue itself and can become its own solution.

As a time period of transition from personal computing to web-based cloud

solutions, many of the older Internet users grew in a society that was not ready to deal

with globalization and information the way it is relevant today. Technological

analphabetism is a factor, just as being conscious of how personal data is managed.

But these issues extend to newer generations as well, since educating about how

to manage personal information and use web-based technologies is barely starting to

become societal concern. Being ignorant on how companies and governments collect

data and deal with it has led to these practices getting a free pass from social stigma.

This is something that needs to change as soon as possible, before the concept of

personal data is altered into public records, or company assets.

Some examples of the legality of privacy exist in other forms, however. As

Steven Davis states in Privacy, Rights, and Moral Value, there is a distinction between

legal rights and moral rights. At the moment, outside of the European Union the right to

be forgotten exists as a moral right rather than legal. As other rights may clash with it,

like the freedom of speech, remains to be settled on a specific basis but to simply put,

the right to access to private information should be disputed in the court, not the other

way around.

So what is the role of social responsibility in exercising the right to be forgotten?

Government alone cannot make sure companies and its own intelligence agencies are

protecting the private data they have access to and do not abuse it for economic or


political reasons. Society itself must scrutinize the usage of personal information by

these entities and become more insightful and assertive in it.

In order to change society its members must change, and what was once

accepted or tolerated must be stigmatized and looked down, just like it has done so in

the past with unlawful or unethical practices. Shunning and not rewarding economically

companies that excessively collect and sell private data from their products and

services is the main weapon of the consumer. Likewise, competitors that actually care

about privacy and data usage will become driving forces in the market if the consumer

votes so.

In a similar manner, getting involved in the actions of government representatives

and electing those with a pro-privacy ideology is another action, making sure politicians

keep up their promises and work towards maintaining the right to be forgotten while

balancing the preservation of data relevant to the public and maintain the freedom of

speech.

As overwhelming as the presence of data-heavy corporations and surveillance-

happy governments are, these are entities that are dependant on the individuals that

they govern, provide services and manufacture products. Not alienating them from

society, if people are conscious on the clear dependence on themselves and their

informed decisions they hold the real power to determine what practices will prevail.

Education is the method in which individuals will have the knowledge to judge the

value of their privacy and participate in these activities to preserve the right to the

forgotten, one that at the moment citizens from the world are not conscious about and is

in danger of being forgotten.


Ethics and Moral

In the sections above, a plenty of information about what the ‘Right to be

forgotten’ is, about its initial idea, why is the existence of that right so important and how

the society is responsible to use their power to make decisions about their own privacy,

that should not be controlled by anyone else. But what happens when this revolutions is

linked to ethics and morals? Is it correct the behavior of those companies that do not

support this right?

First of all, everyone should understand what privacy is. When a person

has proper privacy, he or she is free from public attention, free from being disturbed or

observed by outsiders, out of their control. That means that what they do is not exposed

to the world, unless they want it too, so their activities are free from public humiliation.

The ‘Right to be forgotten’ began when the society started to be aware

that what they post online will stay on the web for the rest of the times, even if you

delete from their personal social media, blogs or web pages, they are probably stored

somewhere waiting for a suitable use, that will be decided by a certain search engine or

web services. Every post, might or not contain photographies are saved, even a

meaningless picture someone took of the floor. That is because they do not review

everyone’s posts before deciding to keep it or not. That process is totally automatized

so no personal or even human judgement is included in it.

People have wondered about how search engines make profit out of offering

that service. Because all people do is search for other pages from it and they do not see

any advertisement on their main page, where people type in their search. Search


engines do have advertising, but they are personalized and placed in other web pages

that have an agreement with that search engine. For example if you are looking for a

backpack on E-bay or Amazon, in just a few minutes when you go back to your

facebook page or any other page, you will see advertisements of backpacks all over.

That happens because they do not only store information people post, they also save

everything you put on search engine, your private conversations and information you

used to sign up in a new page.

Business companies require that information to attack their target market

and to look for people that is needing products or services they offer. So instead of

making surveys for people to answer, they sign an agreement with a search engine to

provide them with the information they need. And when an enterprise needs a certain

picture to use and edit into a ad, they will ask the search engine they are linked to, and

the search engine or social media page will look for a picture that accomplish all their

requirements.

The question is, is that correct? If they are using information that is not theirs,

should not they be paying the owners? Or at least giving they some credit after asking

for their permission? Not even a thank you letter. Not even a notification that their

property is being used for the benefit of a person they do not even know. Is that morally

acceptable?

To make profit out of that information that is not theirs is not a legitimate reason

to justify the gathering of that information and therefore the use and access to it. That

does not meet the code of conduct that rational people should understand and follow,

the definition of morality.


Privacy is necessarily connected to important moral concerns (=privacy has

absolute value). For example: privacy is necessary in some way for human well-being,

or human dignity, or rational choice. Everybody possesses or necessarily needs these

things. In this case, the value would be something that every person, no matter who, no

matter where they live, would morally require for the pursuit of their well-being. (Carroll,

n.d.).

Facebook has become a great aggressor of privacy, maybe because is it one of

the most used social media for personal purposes or a great opportunity for new

business because they can create a account for free and give information and publicity

to their company since it is almost guarantee that a lot of user will see it. People are so

used to share their moments and thoughts on their profile without being conscious that

their information can be used against them later on.

“Facebook privacy issues are still far from being a full blown moral panic, but

they're doing a good job approaching it.”(Meadan, n.d.). Sometimes people post

something of themselves by the ecstasy of the moment, when the person realizes that

the picture or text he or her posted online is not suitable for his or her profile, the person

might delete, but that picture will stay somewhere in the web. So once it is posted, there

is no back down. And a skilled hacker could anytime recover the so called ‘deleted’

photography and use it against the protagonist. Even easier, a person that may not be

added as a friend could steal the picture and use it for the same purpose. That is just

ethically and morally not acceptable, because they are using for humiliation exposing it

to the entire world. Although not everyone is going to see it, the possibility is there. It

should be the person’s own decision if he or her wants it to be online or not.


For Europeans, "dignity, honor, and the right to private life" are among the most

important of fundamental rights -- "mainly the right for the (moral and legal) integrity of a

person not to be infringed and for a sphere of privacy to be maintained and

distinguished," explains University of Zurich Law Professor Rolf Weber. (Chow, 2013,

p.1).

Some companies search for their candidates on social media to see them in their

‘natural’ state, those old pictures people posted when they were young, doing

something crazy, should not be the reason of why they are not hired. People should

have their right to keep those moment just as private memories, and not let those

memories to be a reason why they are judge. People change, so the company should

not have a prejudice of how they are going to fit in the working environment.

One could argue that I have a moral right to make ethical judgement – that an

ethical judgement is something I ought to do – but it seems to me that just because I

ought to make an ethical judgement does not give me the right to make such

judgements. (Whitefrozen, 2012).

This kind of situations have happened in a different way, it is not always the main

character of the text or photography the one who posted it. Some friend that thinks it is

funny could have taken the picture and posted it, or a stranger that does not even know

the person and the protagonist never sees the picture. The funny videos and/or

pictures user see in their social media or web page often show a person being ridiculed,

and probably he or her is not aware of the existence of it. Some people can be derided

without being conscious about it, but it does not stop it from being an action with

questionable sense of moral. And it takes forever to ask for the responsible social media


to take it down, most of the times, all people can do is block it from themselves. But still

other users will be able to look at it.

But the ‘Right to be forgotten’ does not only protect society from keeping their

reputation. People should be able to request something of their property to be taken

down, just for the reason they do not longer want it there. Many artists and

photographers claim that they have found their works on other places, used as an

advertisement or just simply stolen without giving proper credit. Since ever, stealing has

been a crime and not ethically acceptable. Why would it change with this? It does not

have to be something tangible or physical to consider it a robbery. Making money out

from something that is not theirs, simply do not seem right.

So far, only Europeans can enjoy this right. Considering all the reasons and risks

explained above, this should be an obvious law and enforced in every country. People

should not need to fight for it, it should be a basic need as access to water. But when

these needs are not given, society just need to fight for it so it can reach not only

Europe, but the whole world.


Impact in the U.S.

This section of the essay will focus solely on the effects the right to be forgotten

has provoked in the United States and how approving it would improve the entire

country. The issue that first came to be known and solved in Europe is now causing

several debates and unconformities regarding both the viewpoints in favor and against

the right to be forgotten in the U.S.

“Google is rejecting an order by the French data privacy agency to remove

search results worldwide upon request, saying European law allowing the 'right to be

forgotten' doesn't apply globally.” (Hoffman, 2015) as the rest of the paper states, the

right to be forgotten has yet to be approved in the United States. This section of the

essay will state why it is of great essence to approve this right and why it would be of

benefit to all of the country’s citizens.

The people opposing to this right, claim that approving it would create a sense of

censorship and be completely against what the whole internet has been used for since it

was created and therefore be a way to oppress its users. The opposing viewpoint also

states that by censoring what people can see when they search online the right to be

forgotten could be used to manipulate information and make people forget important

matters.

The last major claim the opposing viewpoint has is that most of the reasons

people want this right to be approved for, are already being dealt with. These reasons

range from credit reports to criminal records from minors. These issues are already


taken care of, but there are still people you can easily find by searching them on search

engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. And some of these people’s reputation can

still be harmed by these results and the content they carry.

The favoring viewpoints hold their positions stating that people get judged by

actions committed in their youth, internet users feel like their privacy has been

compromised, they therefore do not feel satisfied with their experience. In order to solve

all of these issues regarding both parties, the government has worked on it by creating

several debates and promising to restructure the actual laws that relate in any way to

the right to be forgotten and any issue that arises from using a search engine.

“The University of Oklahoma expelled two fraternity members this week after

video of them leading a racist chant went viral. Now, a Google search of the young

men’s names shows the incident right at the top of the results.” (Roberts, 2015). This is

just one of many cases that occur in the United States every year. A young boy that

happens to make a mistake such as this one can suffer consequences for it, even

decades after it even happened just because there is a “funny” video or article regarding

the action that a person committed in their youth or simply a mistake that occurred in a

normally long forgotten past.

This is a problem that can affect anyone; it does not even need to be a severe

mistake to make someone regret it for the rest of their life. The kids involved in the racist

chant could see themselves affected by this childish act 30 years from now, when not

even them or the people affected by it remember it even happened. Such a mistake

could really be anything that causes commotion among the community.


Eliminating prejudice raised from information taken out of the internet would be of

great help towards hiring people that are capable of realizing the job and help them

avoid being judged by petty actions that do not even represent the way they act and

think in the present time being. Approving the right to be forgotten would greatly

improve this problem by avoiding giving employers the chance to turn down people

solely on the actions they realized long ago on their free time.

This problem can actually set foot to a whole new issue that involves a feeling of

lack of privacy. People feel like everything that they do or say will be recorded in the

internet forever shaming their name and making them feel a sense of restriction or fear

of precisely being judged by an action long afterwards by an otherwise possible

employer, and therefore holding them back from their full potential.

““Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. They hold

for many Americans the privacies of life.” (Roberts, 2014) With a few clicks, the intimate

details held in your phone–photos, past locations, political opinions expressed in

emails–may be transmitted to and forever memorialized on the Internet.” (Sidhu, 2014)

The same can be said about a personal computer, and really any electronic

device that has internet access within it.

In today’s society it is dangerous for anyone to interact with the devices that hold

any kind of information about them, which should not be the case in a world where


everyone can feel comfortable using their technological advantages the way they were

meant to be used. The right to be forgotten is would ensure this was a given right to

everyone instead of just a privilege to a few.

“Beyond what we self-disclose, there’s all the sensitive information about us that

others may post online.As more of our past becomes accessible in the present, so does

the potential for it to redefine our identities, complicate our relationships, and generally

be used for mischief. ” (Sidhu, 2014)

Approving the right to be forgotten throughout the United States would guarantee

everyone’s safety regarding their privacy and eventually help people feel more

comfortable with failure while not fearing being shamed and misjudged by a simple

search result, therefore encouraging people to form an active part in innovating and

creating new ideas.

“Creating a “right to be forgotten” in the United States would not be without costs.

For one, it would arguably threaten free speech. With narrow exceptions, we allow the

relative significance of a piece of information to be debated in the marketplace of ideas,

not removed from public consideration altogether” (Sidhu, 2014)

People from all over the country are starting to show dissatisfaction towards the

response Google has regarding the right to be forgotten applied to the United States.


All of the unconformities presented by the citizens of the united states regarding

their privacy and how search engines handle it, have caused debate following all over

the country among political members. The settlement that is being pursued is to

approve the right to be forgotten but not before modifying it to a structure that have

people supporting both viewpoints satisfied with the final results, which are meant to

both respect people’s privacy, but also keep in mind that it is important to pertain from

concealing a necessary truth from the public eye. This means having the law appealing

for both parties while making sure every possible exploiting clause it might contain

within it is being dealt with.” the right to be forgotten is about to become law in at least

one state in 2015 – likely pointing to a country-wide rise in awareness over the coming

months.

In fact, 61% of Americans already believe that some version of the right to be

forgotten is necessary. ” (Maycotte, 2014) There are several Americans ready to

support the approval of the right to be forgotten in their country, and although not

everyone supports it completely, they definitely think it should be implemented in some

kind of way. The way Americans want the right to be forgotten to be put into action

range from protecting minors from having their information posted up in the internet, to

everyone with the exception of public figures, to people who say it is in everyone’s right

to decide what any stranger can find about them with a simple search.

“The second majority within the study, the 21% who believe it is currently too

hard to define relevancy and therefore the right to be forgotten law is too difficult to


enforce, are currently winning the U.S. Internet right to privacy vs. right to information

argument.” (Maycotte, 2014) The rest of the population either is completely against the

idea of having a right to be forgotten claiming the information posted on the internet

should stay forever in the public record or struggles defining what is relevant enough to

stay posted and what is all right to remove from the internet to keep people safe from

the repercussions it might be able to bring in the future.

“The flip side of Europe’s new law is that it could suppress collective memory,

and force people to forget information that is true. The right to purge Google, in this

sense, is no more than a new form of censorship that provides encouragement to

dictators everywhere.” (Roberts, 2015) Although the opposing viewpoint presents

several valid reasons to disapprove the right and each person should be held

accountable for their own actions, people also are supposed to be free to disclose any

information they want about themselves and should not be suffering consequences that

can ruin their career or even their whole life everywhere they go for a simple mistake

committed several years prior to a given circumstance.


Facebook Image Policies

The right to be forgotten on social media represents a topic of constant

controversy, and therefore, debate. So this perspective is not only about Facebook, but

about the relation of internet services with the right to be forgotten, Facebook being one

of the most prominent ones on the subject.

There are many perceived problems regarding the issue, and mostly, the

opinions tend to go in favor of privacy and anonymity, that is, the execution of the right

to be forgotten.

Europe, in general, has taken a strong stance to pursue the commitment of

technology companies to practice the concept of the right to be forgotten, but some

think this might be linked to politicians jumping into a bandwagon to attract the attention

of voters. People in Europe have stronger desires for online privacy and security, so it

makes sense that other people will make use of this situation.

Companies operating in Europe, then, have to apply the right to be forgotten to

their services. Facebook must completely remove user data from the client and server

side, Google must hide search results at the request of a user, etc.

In the United States, the right to be forgotten seems to be hanging inside some

kind of limbo. It is a world renowned issue and given the globalized society in which we

live in as long as we live in the industrialized world, we are all aware of the dangers of

sharing information over the internet, and it makes little sense that the country is not

taking the same approach as Europe. We sometimes fear services and having hidden


motives. Windows 10 was loved by critics by performance and now is being panned for

security issues, that in reality are not much of a problem for the normal user. Why does

this happen? It seems paranoic, at least. We tend to jump into conclusions over the

slightest doubt of knowledge, and get defensive before even trying something. People

prefer to go with the flow than to try to find a way to break it and find flaws in it.

In my opinion, the thought of applying the right to be forgotten anywhere,

everywhere, is a matter that is taken lightly and sometimes out of context. I believe that,

if it is explained to people uninformed on the matter, they will most likely jump on board

of the group trying to get it approved. I wonder how many of these people rely on

Amazon’s recommendation engine, or Facebook automatic face tagging. Most of them

do not even understand how these features work. It reminds me of a discussion I once

read about people getting scared for noticing an airport employee applying duct tape to

one of the wings of the plane that the passengers were on. Someone took a picture of it,

uploaded it to the internet and now, instead of ten people being scared, a whole internet

forum is scared that airports do not take the necessary security measures on the planes

they use. It turns out, the material used was not duct tape, but speed tape, a kind of

tape used in objects that move at fast velocities, such as a plane, and it is designed to

withstand the kind of roughness that fast movement generates. On the Windows 10

topic, people were bashing Microsoft for implementing a kind of keylogger (a virtual

device that tracks whatever is being typed on the keyboard) on the preview version of

the operating system. This was on purpose, and was part of the terms of service. The

preview version, more than being an opportunity for consumers to test before release, is

a way for Microsoft to study the performance of the operating system on a real-world


scenario, and for this they need information on what the user is doing with the system.

The final version of the product does not have this component, but people still think it

does. The pattern here, is that negativity is shadowing the advantages of something, to

the point that those advantages virtually disappear and the disadvantages even start

becoming more than what they actually are. It might sound like I would defend things

that for some are inexcusable (e.g., mexican politicians), but in reality, my approach is

something more to the behaviour of the 8th juror, Davis, from the Twelve Angry Men

movie: “I do not know, it might be”.

Yet, some things do sound frightening, especially with companies refusing to

apply the right to be forgotten. Some instances would be:

● Facebook owning rights to the content you upload, most notably pictures.

● Google having the power of limiting the visibility of certain search results

at will.

From an innocent point of view, an easy way to understand why these are

powers that must be feared, can be explained the following way: I apply for a job, get an

interview appointment, make presence and give my best impression. A week later, I

receive a rejection notification. I get depressed and I do not understand why did that

happen. Discussing it with a friend, he provides me an answer. “You might have given a

good impression on-site, but there is also another impression of you, in a publicly

accessible source that anyone with an internet connection can consult. Your Facebook

account. I can just google your name, append facebook to the search query, and as an

apparent work of magic, I have a source of information, most likely not prepared to give

a good impression to an interviewer, but a more personal kind of material that can give


me a clearer understanding of your personality and your way of being, and with this, I

can infer about your work habits. You have too much information that can give a recruit

a bad impression of you. Party pictures, nonsense postings, badly written comments,

etc. If I were your interviewer, I would not give you the job”.

Now, if that had been not someone looking for a job, but a criminal that I will call

C, we consider the following. Someone uploaded a picture where they appear with C,

and C quickly goes on and deletes the picture, asking everyone to do the same, as he

could be easily tracked with it, studying the picture, or even with the metadata that

modern cameras store in the picture itself (data that is not seen in the picture, but hold

information such as geolocation, dates, etc.). Supposing the criminal lives in the United

States, deleting such content would be useless. The government can easily ask

Facebook to provide the information stored at server side, which the user has no control

of (Whittaker, 2010). The server side data is not shared through the Facebook website,

but it still is accessible by unconventional means. The criminal C, wandering around,

happy that he has nothing to show to incriminate him, is suddenly arrested at the

comfort of his home, and poor him, since he must sound ridiculous trying to negate the

existence of the material that will take him to jail.

In the past two examples, we see the advantages of not applying the right to be

forgotten. So if we turn the knob and set it to on, the outcomes would be opposite. One

citizen would be employed and C would be free to keep on committing crimes. And this,

right here, is why there a real conclusion to the subject is very hard to establish. Both

sides are beneficial for good causes and bad causes. It really is hard to determine what

side has more weight than the other, and it being such a sensitive subject, the ruling


systems cannot go for what side has more support, but for what is actually the right

thing to do. Once again, referencing Twelve Angry Men, one single man was able to

turn a whole case around by simply having the right arguments.

Maybe someday the companies will actually prove themselves right and the right

to be forgotten is not as helpful as now ought it to be. It might seem hard to understand

why for people that are not familiar with the way that a computer or smartphone

software works. It is not only about Google and the user, third parties can and will be

affected (Williams, 2015). Most current and future consumer technology require

information provided by the end-user. If Google actually had all that information that

their Maps app shows to the users, the application would have been ready years earlier.

Even now new features are added to the software as more and more users contribute,

willingly or unknowingly, to the information repository used by Maps. Two of my favorite

books, I bought them because Amazon recommended them to me, because they used

the information I provided. Even better, the recommendation did not even arrive through

Amazon, but through an Amazon ad I saw on my Facebook page, which works by using

your internet browser’s cookies to determine what you were searching for at the

Amazon website and show you similar items while browsing Facebook.

Would I go to a restaurant with no reviews in Maps? Probably not. Will people

stop using Maps to avoid being tracked? Will people stop using online shops to avoid

showing what they buy? Will people stop using social media to avoid sharing their

current situation? The answer is: most likely no. And my opinion, regarding the right to

be forgotten, whether it is applied or not, is that as long as you use this kind of services,

you will be compromised to a certain extent, the same way that anyone can see you


whenever you go outside, your face and actions are always at the eyes of someone

else. True privacy can only be achieved at the top of a mountain where no one would

bother to look for you.


Conclusion

The portfolio takes into consideration multiple perspectives in favor of the right to

be forgotten and each section develops into its own argument and all of them point

toward the same direction. While many points in favor are considered, the opposition is

also taken into account to address potential counter-arguments and refute resistance to

the proposed thesis statement.

In general, the right to be forgotten needs to be implemented and enforced in

other geopolitical areas other than Europe as a step towards protecting the privacy of

the ever-growing community of Internet users from all over the world, specially in the

United States given its relevance in said network’s infrastructure.

The collaboration of all team members is present in the portfolio, providing the reader

with each individual argumentation and research as part of the foundation of the team

statement. Each writing style varies but the mechanics and the general essay direction

is part of the cohesive conclusion reached by the team in its initial stages, alongside the

proposal of topic and role assignment.


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