Lawyer Monthly Magazine - September 2021 Edition

37 SEP 2021 | WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM WHY WE NEED TO ALIGN INTERNATIONAL LAWS ON THE RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN GDPR guarantees the right for people to have their personal data erased. Additional terms also apply: - Individuals can make a request for erasure verbally or in writing. - Individuals have one month to respond a request. - The right is not absolute and only applies in certain circumstances. How Do You Get Your Data Removed? When an individual contacts an organisation regarding the deletion of their data, the organisation must erase the personal data without undue delay. If the organisation has made the data public, then they also must inform other data controllers who process the data that the individual has made a request to be forgotten, and they must also erase the data, including links and copies. Under GDPR laws, organisations that fail to comply with such requests face potentially hefty consequences – often to the tune of £20 million in fines or 4% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher. Organisations often argue against RTBF because they feel the claims are against the data storage and retainment necessary for compliance with a legal obligation or the defence of legal claims. However, where there is no justification, the organisation must comply with the individual’s legal rights. There is no absolute right to be forgotten; it is determined on an individual basis. Europe Leading By Example In June 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) – the court of the Council of Europe, of which the UK remains part – rejected a freedom of speech complaint brought by Belgian newspaper Le Soir publisher Patrick Hurbain concerning an RTBF judgment in his home country. The ruling ordered him to anonymise the name of a driver responsible for a deadly car accident in 1994 in Le Soir’s electronic archives. The original report of the accident, which caused the death of two people and injured three others, had mentioned the driver’s full name, which has now since been replaced with the letter X. The Belgian court recognised the right to be forgotten as “integral” to the claimant’s right to privacy and family life. In this case, the claimant was deemed to have served their sentence and been rehabilitated. Leaving the historical information online would create a lasting criminal record and cause indefinite and severe harm to the driver’s reputation. However, what makes this interesting is that the European Court judgment has now appeared to extend the “right to be forgotten” from search engines to news websites. Not only can RTBF requests ask for information to be removed from search engine results, but redacted and omitted There is no absolute right to be forgotten; it is determined on an individual basis.