Right to be Forgotten Archives - Tech Law Forum @ NALSAR

Comments on the Srikrishna Committee Report and the Draft Data Protection Bill 2018 – I

[Ed Note : The following series of posts contain comments on the Srikrishna Committee Report and the Draft Data Protection Bill, 2018 made and compiled by students from NALSAR University of Law -Ankush Rai, Ashwin Murthy, Arvind Pennathur, Namratha Murugesan, Priyamvadha Shivaji, Shweta Rao, Sriram Kashyap, Vishal Rakhecha and Tanvi Apte. The comments have been uploaded on the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) website.

The present post deals with comments made in relation to four issues that arise in relation to the Report and Draft Bill – a) vagueness, b) government interference, c) the data protection authority and d) surveillance.

TechLaw Symposium at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad – Press Note

[Ed Note : The following press note has been authored by Shweta Rao and Arvind Pennathur from NALSAR University of Law. Do watch this space for more details on the symposium!}

On the 9^th of September NALSAR University of Law’s Tech Law Forum conducted its first ever symposium with packed panels discussing a variety of issues under the broad theme of the Right to Privacy. This symposium took place against the backdrop of the recent draft Data Protection Bill and Report released by the Srikrishna Committee.

The Right to Be Forgotten – An Explanation

Ed. Note.: This post, by Ashwin Murthy, is a part of the NALSAR Tech Law Forum Editorial Test 2016.

The right to be forgotten is the right of an individual to request search engines to take down certain results relating to the individual, such as links to personal information if that information is inadequate, irrelevant or untrue. For example, if a person’s name is searched on Google and certain information appears relating to that person, the person can request Google to remove that information from the search results. This has its largest application in crime and non-consensual pornography (revenge porn or the distribution of sexually explicit material depicting a person without their consent). If X committed a petty crime and a person searching X’s name finds this petty crime, it leads to an obvious negative impact to X, in terms of job prospects as well as general social stigmatisation. X can ask the providers of the search engine to remove this result, claiming his right to be forgotten. The right is not necessarily an absolute right – in its current stage of discussion it merely applies to information that is inadequate, irrelevant or untrue and not any and all information relating to the person. Further there lies a distinction between the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten – the right to privacy is of information not available to the public while the right to be forgotten is removal of information already available publicly.

The Right to Be Forgotten – An Explanation

(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/9RovZB)

This is the first in a two-part post on the Right to be Forgotten. This post is part of our 101 series of posts, which seek to explain the issue at hand, and the next post shall address the issue and the debate surrounding it in more detail.

In 2010, a Spanish citizen filed a complaint against a Spanish newspaper, Google Spain and Google Inc. with the national Data Protection Agency. The complaint objected to an auctioned notice of his repossessed home that kept coming up on Google’s search results. The proceedings against the petitioner had been fully resolved and he claimed the reference to the proceedings on Google to be entirely redundant and a violation of his privacy rights. The Spanish court referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union.