The Right to Be Forgotten
Here’s a heady and novel idea, a law that would do the following:
- Force websites to tell consumers why their data is being collected and retain it only as long as necessary.
- If data is stolen, require notification within 24 hours.
- Offer consumers the right to move their data from one service to another.
- Create the “right to be forgotten,” allowing a user to have his or her data on a site deleted forever.
Needless to say, this isn’t coming from a regulatory agency in the US. It’s being proposed by the European Commission. If passed by the European Parliament, it would go into effect in 2014 and apply to all nations in Europe.
For details, check out this article from Tuesday’s New York Times.
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Splice Now 
January 31, 2012 at 4:49 am
‘RIght to be forgotten’ should already have been made law a long time ago. It’s difficult to track how much personal data you give everyday to a website. It should actually be the case not only online and at all the shops we buy goods.
February 2, 2012 at 7:28 am
I would engage so much more with websites if they only requested the permissions that they needed to integrate with Facebook/ Twitter etc – rather than wanting read, write, disseminate access for every aspect of my account. That’s just an instant no.
Of course, permissions can be revoked but by that point the data has been harvested by the third party. This proposal makes a good deal of sense – and will likely never pass.
February 7, 2012 at 1:39 pm
It won’t be an easy bill to pass. Companies and Marketing Agencies depend on this data to target their customers. Because of the internet they can gather so much data about current and potential customers, if taken away, they would be guessing. Is it right? not sure, but these companies make a lot of money and they won’t go without a fight.