Dear All,
I have not read through the transcripts (yet) so please take this missive with that in mind. I am reminded that the right to be forgotten RTBF is very much in line with the 4th Data Protection Principle. My initial reading of the issues, I have dipped into this deeply for a couple of blogs, but I have not returned to it (yet), is that RTBF is about DP principle 4 and indirectly DP principle 3.
In many ways, we are seeing the technological solution to a technological problem that highlights a bureaucratic process. In the past, my data (my bureaucratic shadow) was relatively limited. If I checked out a book, the library might know and maybe (depending on the topic and the state) the FBI might know*. Other than those two bodies, no one else would know or be interested in knowing what I checked out of the library.
Today, all those records are electronic. My digital shadow is enormous because of the bureaucratic process has become technologically enhanced. Even leaving aside the official bureaucratic records, we have a huge amount of data accumulating about us every day. Today, we have RFID tags in books. Today, we have big data centres with smart algorithms that can match by gps signal to my smartphone to my RFID tag and show who I met, if I am holding the book when we meet and their gps signal is scanned. In the past, that information did not exist. It exists today and I, for one, would like to know that it is "forgotten" and is not being used as the paper based system was being used or could be abused in the past.
The laws we have are paper based laws and even the electronic laws we are developing are well behind the technological trend concerning data. If you are interested, have a look at these sigma scans on future of information technology especially the emerging use of sensors.
http://www.sigmascan.org/Live/Issue/ViewIssue/99/5/dealing-with-rising-floods-of-information/
http://www.sigmascan.org/Live/Issue/ViewIssue/294/5/sensors-and-tracking-finding-anything-anywhere-anytime/
I am purposefully ignoring the archives issue (in part because of the philosophical dispute that archives represents a clean break with current records management) because I do not have the time (now) or space to elaborate the arguments that archival requirements are a secondary issue**. (I touched on these in a different context in my paper on "Bigger Buckets".
The RTBF is in the end, a bureaucratic solution to a technological problem created by the bureaucratic system's reliance on technology. We have yet to figure out what we mean by freedom, which is what the RTBF is trying to articulate, but that is a political question rather than a technological question. To the extent that it has become a technological question, we return to the Heideggerian question of technology. To put it differently, but directly, if we do not have a RTBF we will lose something which makes us human.
Best,
Lawrence
*The FBI used to pressure librarians in major cities to disclose the details of individuals checking out certain books in the late 60s early 70s, or at least that is when it came to light in the 1980s. http://www.readerprivacy.org/info.jsp?id=5
** Yes, archives are important, I mean they do not (in themselves) create a breakpoint that limits legislative oversight of the political space or of political memory. Moreover, their special status needs to be challenged if their function does not provide a collective memory so much as an institutional memory based on institutional rather than community needs. (See my blog on the Shaw report ie in light of abuse histories one finds that the RTBF becomes moot because the institutional memory never wanted or even tried to remember in the first place.) Instead, what we need, in those circumstances is a right to remember, but we may as well chase the horizon.
p.s. I would like to discuss this in more detail, but I have a major writing responsibility that precludes me from writing anything further, so any follow up comments will have to wait.
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