By Amanda
Written words, photos and videos have immense power; they can be seen and read over and over again, stored in a vast array of formats and, at times, be easily misinterpreted. Now take into account the meteoric rise and growth of the internet and the massive popularity of social media and our digital memories are almost impossible to hide or delete; something that Britain’s first Youth Police and Crime Commissioner found out the hard way this week, with compromising tweets dug up from when she was 14 years old and splashed all over the news.
Written words, photos and videos have immense power; they can be seen and read over and over again, stored in a vast array of formats and, at times, be easily misinterpreted. Now take into account the meteoric rise and growth of the internet and the massive popularity of social media and our digital memories are almost impossible to hide or delete; something that Britain’s first Youth Police and Crime Commissioner found out the hard way this week, with compromising tweets dug up from when she was 14 years old and splashed all over the news.
The EU has recently put emphasis on revising the rules concerning data protection. Article 17, the ‘right to be forgotten’ plays a key part in this. This essentially means that individuals would have the right to have historical information held about them on the web deleted if they so choose. Britain is seeking to opt out of this, with the Minister of Justice saying that “the title raises unrealistic and unfair expectations of the proposals.”
This arguably could be because with the controls that are proposed it could essentially become a legal minefield. Taken at face value the ‘right to be forgotten’ sounds promising, but how feasible is it in reality? And what counts as personal data, since this can be somewhat subjective? If you demand that FB delete your account in full, what would happen if someone had quoted something you said in their own post, or tagged you in a group photo – would FB be forced to delete these too, and if so – would that not be an infringement upon freedom of speech?
Could the right be used as a tool for censorship, empowering those that want to censor the web instead of helping those that have justified claims to have their personal information removed?
There are a lot of potential issue that could arise with this right, but clearly something needs to be done to protect our privacy online. The internet has changed the way we live and the changes are coming at lightning speed, our public and private lives are no longer clearly defined; with social media redefining the way we communicate and blurring boundaries.
I am not sure what the answer to this is, but perhaps a good start moving forward would be to assume that everything we write or post online is public – and try to filter ourselves a bit more. After all –
“Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.” ― Jodi Picoult, Salem Falls