Technology
Europe's 'Right to Be Forgotten' Should Terrify U.S. Tech Companies
Photograph by Focus Features/Everett Collection
Jim Carrey's "Joel" erasing his memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004
There’s a saying that the Internet never forgets. But if lawmakers in Europe have their way, we could soon be entering a newfangled age of selective, Internet amnesia. Unless, that is, the tech lobbyists can stop them.
On Wednesday, the European Parliament passed a new set of online privacy measures that include a so-called right to be forgotten, which would grant consumers the right to request that selective data be deleted—and force companies to comply with such demands if they have no legitimate grounds for retaining the data.
It’s an idea that has recently gained momentum around the world, as consumers grow increasingly wary about the degree to which their every move, click, thought, photo, or tossed-off utterance on social media is recorded, replicated, and stored by various data companies and marketers for all eternity. Such permanence, some scholars believe, can be paralyzing for individuals and societies, trapping them in the past and discouraging individuals from taking on new risks and challenges. What would benefit consumers, privacy advocates have argued, is the legal right to expunge some of their digital footprints.
Some tech executives and legal scholars, however, argue that the right to be forgotten—as conceived in Europe, for instance—would cause more unintended problems than it would solve. Such measures, they insist, would likely transformopen platforms such as Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG) into global censors, responsible for adjudicating among endless requests to edit, alter, or delete our culture’s collective digital record.
What that might look like in practice is difficult to say. But many in the technology and communications industry say it would be bad for business. Regulators should step back, they suggest, and let the free market do its thing. After all, a number of new services, such as Snapchat and its self-destructing messages, already haveexploded in popularity in recent years by specifically catering to users’ desire for less permanent forms of social communication.
In the meantime, while Europe’s right-to-be-forgotten measure is one step closer to becoming law, it’s not a done deal yet. As the the Wall Street Journal points out, the controversial data protection measures—the subject of much contention and revision within the European Parliament—still need to win the approval of the EU’s 28 member governments.
Whether or not the measures pass remains “highly uncertain,” according to theNew York Times. In part, that’s because the current parliament will disband for elections in May, possibly further delaying the fate of the data restrictions. Still, considering the seemingly ever-escalating concerns about online privacy around the planet, it seems unlikely that consumer advocates will soon forget about the right to be forgotten.
10 March 2014 Last updated at 18:41
Fugitive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke to the festival at the weekend, calling the NSA a "rogue agency"
Snowden: Surveillance is 'setting fire' to the internet
Edward Snowden: Surveillance is 'setting fire' to the internet
Global mass surveillance conducted by the US and other governments is "setting fire to the future of the internet", Edward Snowden told a packed auditorium of technology innovators via video link in Austin at the South by Southwest Interactive conference on Monday.
He said: "You guys are all the firefighters, and we need you to help us fix this."
The former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, who fled the US last year after leaking thousands of documents that revealed his employer's extensive surveillance programmes, spoke to the audience through a choppy Google Hangout video connection running through multiple proxy servers to conceal his location.
Although Mr Snowden has granted a handful interviews to the media since his revelations made global headlines and led to his seeking asylum in Russia, it was one of his first live appearances before a general audience.
During his one-hour session moderated by his lawyer, Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Mr Snowden urged internet and computing experts to design and produce encrypted communication technology that the average user can use.
Often delving into the technical details of internet security, calling it "defence against the dark arts in the digital realm", he said the systems currently available, if used by the general public, would make NSA bulk surveillance programmes much more difficult.
Mr Snowden also denounced what he saw as a change in US priorities since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, focusing on breaking communication security rather than protecting information.
"When you are the one country in the world that is sort of a vault that is more full than anyone else, it doesn't make sense for you to be attacking all day rather and never defend your vault," he said.
He also criticised the NSA's mass data collection system as being ineffective and a waste of resources. Instead, he said, the agency should be focusing on the type of people who present a threat.
Fugitive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke to the festival at the weekend, calling the NSA a "rogue agency"
He cited Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan as individuals the government might have been able to catch if they had directed resources in the right areas.
"We spent all this money, we spent all this time hacking into Google's and Facebook's back end to look at their databases," he said. "What did we get out of that? We got nothing."
Mr Snowden received a warm reception from the audience, and the question-and-answer session included words of praise in an email from internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who said his actions were "profoundly in the public interest".
The former NSA contractor's appearance was not without critics, however. US Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas wrote an open letter to the conference's organisers on Friday, urging them to deny the NSA leaker a public platform to air his views.
Mr Snowden's "only apparent qualification", he writes, "is his willingness to steal from his own government and then flee to that beacon of first amendment freedoms, the Russia of Vladimir Putin".
At the start of the session, Mr Wizner, who serves as Mr Snowden's legal adviser, replied that although freedom of expression protections are generally stronger in the US than in Russia, "if there's one person for whom that's not true, it's Ed Snowden".
If Mr Snowden were still in the US, he said, he'd probably be held by the government in solitary confinement.
Mr Snowden's session is the latest event in a technology conference that has been dominated by talk of internet security, government surveillance and privacy rights.
On Saturday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, also speaking via video, called the NSA a "rogue agency" that "has dirt on everyone".
Later on Monday, journalist Glenn Greenwald - who has worked with Mr Snowden to report on information contained in his secret NSA documents - will also have a video session.
In his final question, Mr Snowden was asked to assess the importance of his revelations.
"Regardless of what happens to me, this is something we had a right to know," he said.
"I took an oath to support and defend the constitution, and I saw the constitution was violated on a massive scale.
The interpretation of the constitution had been changed in secret from 'no unreasonable search and seizure' to 'any seizure is fine, just don't search it'. That's something the public ought to know."
14 March 2014 Last updated at 01:23
Mr Zuckerberg said that the internet needed to be made more secure for users
Mark Zuckerberg 'confused and frustrated' by US spying
Mr Zuckerberg said that the internet needed to be made more secure for users
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said he has called President Barack Obama to "express frustration" over US digital surveillance.
The 29-year-old said in a blog post the US government "should be the champion for the internet, not a threat".
His comments come a day after a report the US National Security Agency (NSA) imitated a Facebook server to infect surveillance targets' computers.
The NSA said the report was "inaccurate".
Mr Zuckerberg said in September that the US "blew it" on internet spying.
The tech founder wrote on Thursday "it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform".
Broken trust?
"When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government," he said in his blog post.
"The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat.
"They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst."
The NSA's activities were leaked by a former contractor for the agency, Edward Snowden, last year.
His leaks have pointed to the NSA collecting phone records, tapping fibre-optic cables that carry global communications and hacking networks.
According to the documents, the agencies had "backdoor" access to the servers of nine major technology companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
All the companies named have denied their involvement.
The NSA called the latest claims, that it expanded surveillance by using malware, "inaccurate".
The agency said in a statement: "The NSA uses its technical capabilities only to support lawful and appropriate foreign intelligence operations, all of which must be carried out in strict accordance with its authorities."
White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden confirmed that the president spoke with Mr Zuckerberg on Wednesday evening regarding "recent reports in the press about alleged activities by the US intelligence community.'' She gave no further comment.
'Setting fire'
Since claims emerged that the security services were using social media and technology companies to monitor people, Facebook has teamed up with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, AOL, LinkedIn and Yahoo to form an alliance called Reform Government Surveillance.
The group has called for "wide-scale changes" to US government snooping.
In his latest blog post, Mr Zuckerberg said that to keep the internet strong, "we need to keep it secure".
Earlier this week, Mr Snowden told a conference that mass surveillance conducted by the US and other governments was "setting fire to the future of the internet".
Earlier this month, European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes said billions of people around the world do not trust the internet.
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