Why in News?

• Delhi High Court has granted relief to a petitioner seeking to exercise Right To Be Forgotten (RTBF).

About Right to Be Forgotten

• Right to have publicly available personal information removed from the internet, search, databases, websites or any other public platforms, once the personal information in question is no longer necessary.
• RTBF gained currency after the 2014 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the Google Spain case.
• RTBF is also known as the right to erasure.

Countries implementing RTBF

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted by EU in 2018.
• Article 17 of GDPR provides for the right to erasure of personal data which is

1. considered no longer necessary
2. consent has been withdrawn
3. processing of which has been objected to
4. personal data unlawfully processed
5. where there is a legal obligation for erasure

• Limitation to GDPR:-

1. for reasons of public interest in the area of public health
2. for archiving purposes “in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance”
3. for establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims
4. to exercise the right of freedom of expression and information
5. for the establishment of a legal defense or in the exercise of other legal claims.
6. to comply with a legal ruling or obligation

• Irrelevancy, inaccuracy and violation of law make the ground in Russia for removal of links to personal information from search engine.
• Turkey and Siberia recognise the right to be forgotten to some extent

Status in India

• RTBF doesn’t have legislative sanction yet. However, in the Puttaswamy judgment 2017 , the Supreme court held that the right to privacy is a fundamental right.
• Currently, many High courts have expressly recognised the right to be forgotten in their judgments, taking note of international jurisprudence on this right.
• Recommendations by the B.N Srikrishna Committee also emphasized this right. Thus, it was incorporated under the Draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019

Effect on International Relations

• The regulatory differences in the protection of personal data between countries have real impact on international relations.
• Data is the new oil, so it needs utmost security in relation to cross border data flow.

Need of such right

• Ability to remove libelous, embarrassing, and stigmatizing information from a past post or upload
• The removal of illegally uploaded content by a third party, including “revenge porn”
• Removing information that might compromise personal or financial safety

Challenges with such rights

• Balance need to be established between the Right to Privacy of individual and the Right to Information of the public.
• It may impair the right of media personnel to do independent reporting. The adjudicatory officer may remove articles of media groups that generally criticize government policies.
• The removal of complete judgments may restrict public scrutiny of judicial performance to ascertain the fairness and objectivity of the administration of justice. Further judgments are an important source of learning for law students.
• The removal sometimes creates a Streisand effect. It is a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing that information.

Way ahead

• Privacy needs to be added as a ground for reasonable restriction under Article 19 (2) through a constitutional amendment for the effective implementation of RTBF.
• The impending Data Protection Bill should be passed expeditiously. This would give individuals a legal right to erase their unnecessary and inappropriate personal data.