The right to be forgotten

The right to be forgotten gained international attention in May 2014, when the European Court of Justice ruled that Google was obligated to recognize European citizensâ data protection rights to address inadequate, irrelevant, or excessive personal information. As of April 14, 2015, Google received 239,337 requests to eliminate 867,930 URLs from search results and has removed 305,095 URLs, a rate of 41.5 percent. The right to be forgotten is intended to legally address digital information that lingers and threatens to shackle individuals to their past by exposing the information to opaque data processing and online judgment. There are a number of challenges to developing these rights â digital information means and touches so many aspects of life across cultures as they grapple with new policies. The controversial ruling and establishment of such a right, potential for a similar movement in the U.S., and future of transborder data flows will be discussed by this esteemed panel.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117474/1/pra2145052010010.pd