Origin & Recognition of the Right to be Forgotten
The Right to be Forgotten (hereinafter RTBF) was discussed earlier in 2006 by European Union thereafter, RTBF was firmly or officially recognised in a landmark case which is “Google Spain SL, Google Inc Vs. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González (2014)- Google Vs. Spain, the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of European Citizens and held that a right to request, from commercial search engines such as Google, Yahoo etc., to remove the link of personal information which is no longer relevant.
However, the court remained silent on such removal from the newspaper article. Obviously, the court gave utmost importance to privacy rights rather than an economic interest of commercial organisations affirming the ruling passed by the Spanish Data Protection Agency.
Need for RTBF
In my opinion the pious purpose and reason behind this must be kindness, why should one be reminded of his/her past again and again? Everyone has the right to restart something or have a fresh look to their present and future. Why should one be stigmatized perpetually of a particular action performed in the past? Validly, it was ruled and indeed an advance step in order to develop a privacy right of an individual.
GDPR & RTBF
I would not hesitate to mention here that European Union has always been a great leader in the area of Privacy Laws and the above-mentioned judgement is the best example of it. However, the success story of EU doesn’t stop here, they took another bold step in the year 2016 by publishing GDPR and implementing it in the year 2018. Under article 17 of the GDPR the Right to be Forgotten is enshrined, another name from which this right is known as “Right to Erasure”.
Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 & RTBF
Probably, after taking cues from the global evolutions and legal issues, India also decided to take a bold step and the Right to be Forgotten provided under chapter V-section 20 of the Bill which mandated that the Data Principal to have right to restrict or prevent the continuing disclosure of his/her personal data after its purpose is sufficed. The right can only be exercised by the Data Principal upon making an application and can only be exercised by an order of an adjudicating officer.
However, there is a saving clause in the same Bill and clarifies that such order not to be made unless it is shown by the Data Principal that the Right to be forgotten of his/her personal data overrides the right of freedom of speech and expression and the right to information of any citizen.
The detailed discussion of this topic will continue in the next post and conclude the topic.
References-
https://www.psalegal.com (Picture Credit)