US Activists Oppose US Govt Calls To Weaken EU Privacy Rules 151
judgecorp writes "The European Commission has proposals for data privacy (including the 'right to be forgotten') and the U.S. government is opposing them. Now U.S. activists have arrived in Brussels to lobby against their government's opposition to the European measures. The move comes following reports of 'extreme' lobbying by U.S. authorities against the European proposals."
Although the "right to be forgotten" raises some free speech issues, it doesn't seem like a bad idea in principle.
Re:Not a pretty sight (Score:5, Informative)
Extreme lobbying, such as employed in Iraq, etc., etc?
Why is this marked as troll?
U.S. has no jurisdiction or vote or representation in Europe. Any opposition to European laws thus consists of some unofficial threats, right?
Nor is there a legitimate "political" reason. The only reason it might be happening is some companies (Facebook, etc.) are concerned about running into some customer-protection laws which are conveniently absent in U.S.
The OP is not that far off.
Re:It cuts both ways (Score:4, Informative)
This concept is dealing with the right to be forgotten by computerized systems, not forgotten by humans.
Re:It cuts both ways (Score:5, Informative)
But it gets much more complicated when we're all connected. Suppose a European creates a Facebook account (hosted in the US) and later wants some information removed. Which country's laws should prevail?
Facebook has a HQ in Ireland, so the EU laws would apply
The only out for Facebook is if the European citizen was in the USA when they created and updated the account...
That's likely to be a vanishingly small percentage of facebook users.
It gets even more interesting if it isn't a big international company like Facebook, but a small US-based blog site, that someone in a foreign nation chooses to participate in. Whose laws prevail then?
That's not at all interesting.
The European courts have no jurisdiction. End of conversation.
Finer legal minds than ours have parsed issues like this for a couple decades now.
Re:When free speech of US citizens is directly aff (Score:5, Informative)
As proposed, Slashdot (a US company) could be forced to delete posts made by US citizens, if those posts mention someone in the EU.
NO. That is absolutely NOT what the right to be forgotten is about.
The right will give an individual to have THEIR data removed from sites. Data that they themselves uploaded, such as posts they made or photos they shared. If you see one of those photos and decide to write a blog post about it then your blog is perfectly safe and won't be covered by this right.
The right to be forgotten is not about purging information about yourself from the internet, it is about having companies delete your data when asked to. That means if you delete your Facebook profile it really is deleted, and Facebook can't carry on displaying your photos to other people or displaying your name in search results or store information about you any more. If other people post on their wall mentioning your name there is nothing you can do about it, beyond the usual legal protections against libel etc.