The Right to be forgotten allows the removalof personal information

The Right to be forgotten is related to personal data protection.
It can be defined as the right of the user to request the removal or de-indexing from search engines of specific links relating to personal information.
The right to be forgotten allows to wash away given pieces of information considered “inadequate and non-relevant” by the owner.

The 2014ruling brings into effectthe Right to be forgotten

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja Gonzàlez case: now all search engines are to be considered responsible of the data they process - and are bound to evaluate each user's requests to remove specific content.

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1.1

WIKIPEDIA HISTORY FLOW

This graph shows the evolution of the wikipedia pages about the “right to be forgotten” from 2007 to 2014 in five different languages.
Each line represents an event, and its trend. The points at the edges of each line represent its beginning and endig, while the double points are common events in multiple languages.

ITALIAN ENGLISH SPANISH GERMAN FRENCH 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Addition for single language Common addition for multiple languages Cancellation 13 MAY 2014 European Court ruling (Costeja case) 25 JAN 2012 Reading’s proposal is to be applied by 2015 13 OCT 2010 Chartes du droit à l'oubli numérique 27 MAR 2005 Italian Data ProtectionAuthority ruling aboutRight to be forgotten Law 675/96 Art. 28 Privacy Rights Authority Google hasn’t applied to the ruling yet Personal data protection Authority Mario Chiesa caseon Repubblica.it (2/02/2005) Giulio Caradonna caseRome Court Privacy Authority newsletter (27/03/2005) Lusanna Carolinaof Lega Nord (20/05/2009) CHARTE DU DROIT A L'OUBLI CHARTE DU DROIT A L'OUBLI Link: Chartesdu droit à l'oublinumérique German Case German Case Reading’s legislativeproposal to the EU Court Reading’s proposal is to beapplied by 2015 EU Court ruling Spanish Case Spanish Case Spanish Case Spanish Case Ortona Court fees newspapersued by a restaurant Rodotà expresses the conceptof "offended party" USA cases:Malvin v Reid Sidis v FR publish European Data ProtectionRegulation 2012 First Amendament USA Revenge porn Contested in USA and Argentina Right to be forgotten = Droit a l'oubli Jimmy Wales,Wikipedia founder described the EU's law as deeply immoral Link: Supreme Court(Catania Case - Naples 8/11/11) Right to be forgottenin commercial busines reports Right to be forgotten on the web Argentinian Case Argentinian Case EU RTBFArgentinian Case(sett 2011) Right to be forgotten, Data protection Book on Right to be forgottenby P. S. Castellano Habeas Data Link: UE Link: Fair CreditReporting Act (USA, 1970) Google Spain v NationalProtection Data Agency "Forget Me Bot" report Google experts committee Difference between "Right to beforgotten" and "Digital eraser" Link: Norbert Nolte article V. Mayer - Schonberger"Delete - Die tugend des..." Link to X-pire: digital eraserplug-in browser (German Gov) Aigner Ilse Sebastian Nerz No law for RTBF, 2011 law about EUCommission’s Data Protection Law V. Mayer Schonberger promotes RTBF 2012 Reading’s RTBF on the web Link: more privacy on the web Informal Auto DeterminationPrinciple Techno Viking (viral video on Youtube)30/05/13 - Berlin District Court Rejected law proposedby V. M-S. 21/10/13 Germany: Data Protectionand Auto determination Law Wikipedia’s list of linkwith pending deletion requests Search engines 95/46 CE Directiveon Personal DataProtection Distinction between "RTBF"and "de-index" Link CNIL: how to delete datafrom a search engine RTBF = de-index and deletion Link to article aboutGoogle’s de-index (19/05/14)

Analysis of the pages of the right to be forgotten in five different languages: Italian, French, Spanish, German, (these languages has been chosen because them are the most influential in Europe). Further research of the elements of the page "view history" and creation of a timeline of the life of each topic added to those pages.

The growing interest towards the topic

This topic is gaining more and more attention, generating an increasing interest towards it. The different pages on Wikipedia that deal with this subject are in continuous growth.
The topic started to be discussed first on the Italian page in 2007, then the others followed. While the english one is one of the last to talk about it, being created only in 2014 after the ruling, it is by far the richest.

0 47.548byte 16.685byte 8.832byte 2.178byte 19341byte 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007
Italian Data Protection Authority ruling about Right to be forgotten 22 July 2005 Chartes du droit à l'oubli numérique 13 October 2010 Reding's proposal is to be applied by 2015 25 January 2012 European Court ruling (Costeja case) 13 May 2014 ENGLISH ITALIAN GERMAN SPANISH FRENCH
0 47.548 byte 19.341 byte 16.685 byte 6.832 byte 2.178 byte 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 ENGLISH ITALIAN GERMAN SPANISH FRENCH
Italian Data ProtectionAuthorit y ruling aboutRight to be forgotten 22 July 2005 Chartes du droit à l'oubli numérique 13 October 2010 Reding’s proposal is to be applied by 2015 25 January 2012 European Court ruling (Costeja case) 13 May 2014
By analysing the history page of each language a dataset was created, using Kimono tool, with the number of bytes, the author and the date of the edits, removing those consisting in less than 50 bytes. In order to provide a more accurate view of the reasons of these trends, the main historical events have been added to it.

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2.1

WIKIPEDIA NETWORK

Through the analysis on Wikipedia it is immediately clear that the main issues are Censorship, Privacy and Freedom of information, which are the input to the web corpus on Google.

Analysis of the most important pages on Wikipedia, taking in consideration two levels of See Also links regarding the Right to be forgotten page: the See Also have been selected through Seealsology tool and then visualized in a graph to Gephi.

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2.2

WEB CORPUS

The analysis of each single query shows that a more positive or negative outcome is linked to the query itself. Despite this, it can be viewd that the positions of govern are generally towards a more positive way, where the media are generally against the Right to be forgotten.

Analysis of the speakers and position on the web through 125 articles in five search queries on Google (25 articles each): "Right to be forgotten", "Right to be forgotten"+"Freedom of information", "Right to be forgotten"+Censorship, "Right to be forgotten"+Privacy, "Right to be oblivion"-forgotten. Once read the articles, each quote was categorized by position, main issue and type of speaker.

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2.3

JOURNALISTS

By geo-localizing the journalists of the web corpus, it is immediately clear that the majority of those contrary to the Right to be forgotten are from United States and United Kingdom. The size of the circles shows the number of quotes gathered in the previous analysis.

Analysis of the speakers and position on the web through 125 articles in five search queries on Google (25 articles each): "Right to be forgotten", "Right to be forgotten"+"Freedom of information", "Right to be forgotten"+Censorship, "Right to be forgotten"+Privacy, "Right to be oblivion"-forgotten. Once read the articles, each quote was categorized by position, main issue and type of speaker.

How the web talks about it

The Right to be forgotten is extensively discussed on the web, generating very contrasting positions. The positions of the speakers tend to balance themselves considering those against and those in favor (both totally and with criticism) of the Right to be forgotten.

Analysis of the and position on the web through 125 articles in five search queries on Google (25 articles each). Once read the articles, each quote was categorized by position, main issue and type of speaker.

What to remove

The data which the subject requires removal from the search engines, of whatever nature they may be, are perceived in a negative way by the person concerned.
The Right to be forgotten allows to not remain indefinitely exposed to further damage, to honor and reputation, caused by the reiterate publication of a piece of information.

The process of removalstarts with the requests transmission to Google

Since the implementation of the European Court of Justice ruling, the requests of removal of link related to personal information have been directly forwarded to Google (as to other search engine, like Yahoo or Bing). Google proceeds to analyze only the requests sent from European countries, judging their suitability case by case. If a request is accepted, Google will de-index that link only from its european websites, but it will still be accessible through google.com.

Google analyzesand judges the requests of removal

During the evaluation of a request a them selected by Google controls and grants the removal only to those that fulfill the parameters indicated in the May 2014 ruling.
In order to be removed, the results must be irrelevant, obsolete, inadequate and of no public interest.

The outcome:
only part of the links are de-indexed

As of today Google had examined a total of 641.996 urls, against a sum of 214.352 requests.
Of all of these, until today about the 40% of them have been accepted.

How many
of 214.352 requests
have been accepted?

The “Transparency report”: Google supplies some examples of request

Google itself provides the statistics and even some examples of the requests that it receives, updating the “transparency report” continuously.

ACCEPTED

An individual sent multiple requests asking to remove 20 recent links about his arrest for financial crimes committed in a professional capacity.

A woman requested to remove a decades-old article about her husband’s murder, which included her name.

A victim of rape asked to remove a link to a newspaper article about the crime.

DENIED

A media professional requested 4 links to articles reporting on embarrassing content he posted to the Internet to be removed.

A crime victim asked to remove 3 links that discuss the crime, which occurred decades ago.

An individual asked to remove links to articles on the Internet that reference his dismissal for sexual crimes committed on the job.

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3.1

EUROPE MAP

Google provides the information about the requests of removal coming from all the european countries and the percentage about the evaluation outcome. A higher number of requests per capita usually relates to a higher acceptance rate due probably to a better knowledge and understanding of the mechanism.

The data represented in these maps have been extracted from the Google Transparency Report provided and updated by the search engine. The statistics on the average number of requests per country were calcuated by matching the Google data with the numbers of the Wikipedia page “Demographics of Europe”.

Side effects: what you didn’t see coming

In some cases, whether the request had been accepted or denied, the fact that somebody asked to remove a piece of information may increase the public interest towards it and drawing more and more attention to it.
Following the request of removal, attention and publicity may suddenly grow, leading to a phenomenon called “Streisand effect”.

Theopposite outcome to what you may expect: two case studies

As a consequence of the Strisand effect, whether or not the de-indexing succeeded, an unrestrained increasing of the results related to that certain information can follow the single url that was asked to be removed.
An example of this phenomenon can be observed in the cases of Mario Costeja and Dougie McDonald. Both of them asked Google for removal and, even if the former’s request was accepted and the latter’s denied, both have received more attention because of it.

ACCEPTED

Mario Costeja Gonzàlez
Mario Costeja Gonzàlez wanted the spanish newspaper La Vanguardia to remove teo 1998 articles dealing with his financial problems back then.
Once they refused, he asked Google to de-index them, ending in Court. The European Court of Justice ruled in 2014 in favour of Costeja.

DENIED

Dougie McDonald
McDonald awarded a penalty kick to Celtic in the 70th minute, but then reversed the decision.
He was censured by the Referee Committee for lying in his post-match report about the circumstances surrounding his decision. Several links to articles relating to this incident were removed from Google’s search results, but following complaints they were restored.
Google Trends
The graph shows the amount of searches on Google using the names of both subjects before and after their request of removal.
Google Results

The graph shows the amount of results on Google using the names of both subjects before and after their request of removal.

Keep in mind: the piece of information that has to be removed may cause an arousal inpublic interest, generating attention and publicity

Indipendently by the fact that the request is accepted or not and so Google or other search engines succesfully de-index the information, there’s the risk for said request of incurring in the public interest, thus generating attention and publicity towards it, obtaing the opposite outocome to what was expected.
The public interest comes from social curiosity and is able to turn over the stream of contents and information on the web.

Do you have any information you want towash away?

About Us


  • Roberto Catanese

  • Daniele De Pietri

  • Enrica Lo Cicero

  • Ludovica Lorenzelli

  • Cecilia Nuñez


PROJECT BY
  • Roberto Catanese
  • Daniele De Pietri
  • Enrica Lo Cicero
  • Ludovica Lorenzelli
  • Cecilia Nuñez
FACULTY
  • Paolo Ciuccarelli
  • Marco Fattore
  • Stefano Mandato
  • Donato Ricci
  • Salvatore Zingale
TEACHING ASSISTANTS
  • Matteo Azzi
  • Daniele Ciminieri
  • Michele Mauri
  • Azzurra Pini
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