Privacy protection in the big Data age: "The right to be forgotten"

Note: The European Supreme Court ruled in May that, under certain circumstances, individuals have the right to request the deletion of links to personal information. This is a small step for the European Court of Justice, but a big step for netizens to recapture cyberspace.

This means, first and foremost, that personal information can be better protected when confronted with a global lifetime data store such as Google. But the verdict is much more than that, and the verdict also means that Google and other large data stores that can be queried by the public, such as social networks, are responsible for their actions ...

But in fact, even if the link is removed, the information that violates the privacy will still exist on the original site. A more important effect is that Europe's new cyber-privacy regime will not make it more difficult for internet start-ups to face more complex regulation.

Larry Page, Google's chief executive, warned that the ruling could hurt the next generation of internet start-ups and could give authoritarian governments more leverage to limit online communication ...

The more and more personal data generated on the Internet, what should be done? Lewinsky claimed to be "the first person in the internet age to be insulted by the world."

She was the heroine of former U.S. President Bill Clinton's "Scandal" event, the White House intern. The scandal has made Monica Lewinsky "the most humiliated person in the world" and the trajectory of life has changed. For the next more than 10 years, she has been hit by a wall of jobs, and employers have always intentionally or unintentionally mentioned the "Black history" and eventually turned her down. Despite the desire to avoid public concern, Monica Lewinsky has been involuntarily involved in the topic of Clinton, Hillary, and feminism, accepting people's "finger pointing".

Two months ago, Monica Lewinsky, in Vanity Fair, confessed to the problems she had suffered over the years, and in the article she asked: "How deep should politics permeate private life?" How should we reconcile the conflict between privacy and sexual exposure? How can we prevent the government from excessively demanding private data and information? And I am personally very interested to know, in the internet age this kind of humiliating events occur, and how should we respond? ”

Monica Lewinsky's questions point to the core issue of today's big data age--the growing number of personal data generated on the Internet, and what should be done about it? This issue has been preliminarily answered in Europe recently. May 13 this year, the European Supreme Court ruled that ordinary citizens ' personal privacy has been "forgotten."

The European Court's decision originated in a Spanish man's indictment of Google. The man searched Google for negative news about himself and asked Google to remove the links or take protective measures. The request was rejected by Google. He then sued Google in court.

The case is only one of more than 200 requests from Spain for the withdrawal of personal data. After three years of litigation, the European court finally ruled that Google should delete data that involved personal privacy as required by the parties. The ruling will formally introduce the "right to oblivion" into the public eye.

Privacy in the Big data age

Some legal professionals have pointed out that the "right to be forgotten" is derived from "privacy" is a branch of "privacy".

Professor Wang Shi-wen, of the University of Communication, said that "the right to be forgotten" is an independent legal concept. Professor Wang Shi-wen told TI Media: "The internet collects and handles personal information more and more, and individual activities begin to move to cyberspace on a large scale, generating a lot of data related to personal private life, which is the background of the right to be forgotten." So it should be a new right created under the network environment. ”

Data show that in 2013 China produced more than 0.8ZB of data (KB), that is, 800 million TB, equivalent to 12 million Chinese National Library collection, and the world's data stored in 2013, if printed, can cover the entire United States 52 times.

The amount of information crawled by the Internet is increasing by leaps and bounds. "Today, more than 90% of the world's information is in digital form-so it can be stored, processed, manipulated and sent effortlessly," says Victor Schoenberg's deletion. "It includes a lot of personal data that could be abused.

"This information has tended to be overused by businesses. The more comprehensive the collection of things, the more favorable to the business. But to the individual, it actually causes data and personal separation. "said Professor Wang Shi-wen.

Data related to us are in the hands of Internet service providers and associated institutions. Personal privacy is threatened by infringement.

"The right to be forgotten" gives the individual the right to handle network data.

A balance in favor of "privacy protection"

The results of the court's verdict were greeted by many people. "This is a remarkable victory in protecting the personal information of the European people," says Vivian Reading, an EU Justice commissioner. But others have different views. The party's attitude is obvious, saying "the court's verdict was disappointing".

Some worry that the verdict threatens the free expression of the Internet and that it will open the door to private scrutiny. "Soon, people's search results will begin to resemble official biographies, recording only the information they want others to know and not the rest of the reality," said a commentary in the FT. ”

Yunting, an intellectual property lawyer at the Big Bang law firm in Shanghai, told TI Media that the search engine itself is accelerating the free flow of information, which used to be a way of handling information in batches, but now it has to arrange a lot of manpower to deal with it. The decision of the European Court made the transaction cost of society higher, "it is difficult to keep the information flowing and protect the privacy of individuals." "he said.

In fact, Google has been accused of privacy issues. The International Privacy Protection organization has evaluated Google as "the enemy of privacy". But Google has been opposed to such accusations. "If you don't want people to know what you've done, first you shouldn't do it," said Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google. ”

Google has always claimed that it is trying to render effective information to its users, and that it is only responsible for "processing" the information, but not "editing" it. "We are search engines, so we should present all kinds of information in the world," Larry Page said in an interview with the New York Times on June 27. That's why this verdict surprises US-it gives a very different view: You guys are now in charge of editing the world's information. In the past, we do not think that this is our responsibility. ”

The court did not support Google. After the "Prism Gate" incident, Europe is very sensitive to privacy issues, they chose to strengthen the protection of personal privacy, asking Google to respect the user's "forgotten right."

Search engines are also responsible

For a long time, if you find content that infringes your privacy on search engines such as Google and want to delete it, you need to find the original website that publishes the information, persuade them to remove the content, and then go to the search engine to delete the link to the page.

The problem is that it's basically impossible to convince the original site to delete the content. If the original site did not delete the content, the search engine will never delete the relevant page links. The end result is that most of the content that infringes personal privacy will remain on the internet forever.

The "forgotten right" appears to solve such problems.

The European Court's decision required Google to delete links to relevant web pages. Even if the original site does not delete the content on the page, Google must also delete the link. In this way, an individual applying to delete a search link will no longer need to solicit the consent of the webmaster. Once the link is deleted, even if the original page content is still there, it can no longer be found through the search engine.

After the European court ruled, Google May 29 opened the "forgotten" application of the Web page, allowing users in Europe to fill in online forms, submit applications. Applicants are required to provide links, removal reasons, and personal identification documents that they want to remove.

Google set up an internal review team to process the deletion of link applications. This also means that previous search engines were not responsible for Web content, but now they need to consider the content of the Web page.

"Google's capture of information, in fact, the formation of the control of information, as a controller, corresponding to create some obligations." "Google needs to be responsible for the processing of information," says Prof Wang Shi-wen.

Not just "forgotten" on the search engine.

It was a simple idea in January 2012 when the European Commission proposed to add a new "forgotten right" to privacy laws. The European Court's decision on Google was the first practice of the idea. However, if specific implementation is involved, new problems will arise.

First, what is the implementation criteria for processing Delete link requests? Should the application of ordinary people and public figures be separated? Can a person who wants to be a politician be able to ask for a link to delete a scandal about himself?

For example, if Monica Lewinsky wanted to remove the internet link to the "Peach scandal", could it be granted? But conversely, if President Bill Clinton were to be removed from the message-assuming that Clinton was ready to run for president, how would Google choose to face the Clinton application?

The above is just a hypothesis made by titanium media. But this problem does exist, who can apply for approval? What content can be "forgotten"? The European court's verdict did not give an accurate answer.

These will be handled by Google itself. The Court's recommendation is that Google should adopt the principle of better deletion. After Google started offering services to delete links to Web pages, more than 12,000 requests for "forgotten rights" were received in just one day from European residents, averaging 20 applications per minute. Google deals with only a small part of it.

Second, the implementation of the "forgotten right" will encounter another problem, it only involves search engines?

Professor Wang Shi-wen told the titanium media, "the right to be forgotten" extension is actually very broad. "Any information technology that uses machines or computer networks to record people's data and that can have a decisive impact on one's life and identity construction should be included." But what is now confirmed through court rulings is limited to the services provided by search engines such as Google. "he said.

The European Court's ruling is currently limited to the EU and only to Google. But the verdict will lead to a demonstration of effectiveness. In the future, the content of the "forgotten right" may extend to services such as Facebook and Twitter. At the moment, Yahoo has stated that it will strike a new balance between privacy and expression rights.

The internet is still far from being legalized in China

Titanium Media has consulted the domestic major search engines on individual privacy regulations, its content is basically the same, did not provide and "forgotten right" similar services. Titanium Media consulted the University of Communication, Wang Shi-wen professor of Science and law, he told the titanium media, in cyberspace, we currently do not have specific legal provisions, but can refer to tort law 36th has relevant provisions, the provisions of the law are as follows:

The 36th article of Tort Liability Law of the People's Republic of China The network user, the network service provider uses the network to infringe other people's civil rights and interests, should assume the tort responsibility.

If the network user uses the network service to implement the tort, the infringed person has the right to notify the network service provider to take the necessary measures such as deleting, shielding and disconnecting the link. If the network service provider fails to take the necessary measures in time after receiving the notice, the extended part of the damage is jointly and severally liable to the network user.

The network service provider knows that the network user uses its network service to violate the civil rights and interests of others, and fails to take the necessary measures, and the network user undertakes joint and several liability.

But this is different from the European "right to be forgotten" rule, says Prof Wang Shi-wen. According to the current legal situation in China, it is still difficult to solve the problem of Internet privacy. The legalization of internet in China is still a distant topic.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)