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Identity Construction and the Right to be Forgotten: the Case of Gender Identity
Abstract
The Internet’s World Wide Web (web) is increasingly used as people’s primary source of information (Castells, 2010: 382). The technological developments that add to and increase our capacity for data storage and transport have grown explosively in quality and quantity during the last decades (Mayer-Schönberger, 2009), resulting in the growing and generally persistent memory of the web. With the help of search engines, information can be retrieved relatively easily. This easy and long-term accessibility of information has caused, and still is causing, concern when it comes to personal information. In order to deal with such concerns and provide individuals with the means to oppose the persistent digital memory about them, Article 17 of the proposed General Data Protection Regulation hereinafter Proposal (EC European Commission, 2012) was developed. This provision entails a ‘right to be forgotten and to erasure’ (hereafter: RtbF).2
... The notion of control fits naturally with the thinking of many privacy advocates, who have often framed it in terms of individual responsibility (Marwick, Fontaine, & Boyd, 2017). As indicated previously, the reason for why people might want to maintain control over their personal information is that they do not want to lose their standing or respect in society, nor feel that they are being discriminated against because of what is known about them (Korenhof & Koops, 2014). From our perspective, policies about privacy should not be about the control and deletion of information but should focus on use and on the potential negative effects that can happen to people when they release information about themselves. ...
... Or we find statements like "Everything you've ever posted out online could come back to haunt you someday" (Lasica, 1998) or "The harm deriving from the eternal and universal availability of data via the Internet is more likely to be considered disproportionate than the harm resulting from local publicity" (De Terwangne, 2014, p. 93). Authors state how, sometimes, outdated information online can become a problem for a successful transition to a new identity (Korenhof & Koops, 2014). In presenting examples of how the right to be forgotten can help people, Garfinkel (1967) explains how a transgender person might have a problem with her past and how the disclosure of such information might ruin her. ...
In this article, we argue in favor of a macro-societal approach to protect people from the potential harms of personal information online. In the tension between information and privacy, "the right to be forgotten" is not an appropriate solution. Such a micro, individual-based answer puts the burden of protection on each person instead of on external entities that can abuse such knowledge. The personal responsibility to delete personal data is challenging because of the leakage of data that happens through the connections we have with others, many of whom do not share the same privacy preferences. We show that effective deletion is almost impossible (the eternity effect), and is unfair due to the resource burden it entails when users try to achieve it, while at the same time ensuring the potential benefits we can derive in the future from having personal information online. In addition, deletion requests can negatively affect other people who are in the same location and time frame and may not want to have their information deleted. Collectively, we argue also that society is worse off because these circumstances lead people to construct sanitized personas while perpetuating a culture of distrust. Given that the harm is real, we describe technology, societal norms, and the implementation of an anti-discrimination directive for the right to a personal life, and we provide evidence on how anti-discrimination efforts in the past have succeeded when legislation leads to the development of infrastructures that help to enforce them. The dissemination of personal information through public sites and social media is, as Mozart suggested in Cosi fan tutte, gradually educating humanity about human weaknesses.
... The notion of control fits naturally with the thinking of many privacy advocates, who have often framed it in terms of individual responsibility (Marwick, Fontaine, & Boyd, 2017). As indicated previously, the reason for why people might want to maintain control over their personal information is that they do not want to lose their standing or respect in society, nor feel that they are being discriminated against because of what is known about them (Korenhof & Koops, 2014). From our perspective, policies about privacy should not be about the control and deletion of information but should focus on use and on the potential negative effects that can happen to people when they release information about themselves. ...
... Or we find statements like "Everything you've ever posted out online could come back to haunt you someday" (Lasica, 1998) or "The harm deriving from the eternal and universal availability of data via the Internet is more likely to be considered disproportionate than the harm resulting from local publicity" (De Terwangne, 2014, p. 93). Authors state how, sometimes, outdated information online can become a problem for a successful transition to a new identity (Korenhof & Koops, 2014). In presenting examples of how the right to be forgotten can help people, Garfinkel (1967) explains how a transgender person might have a problem with her past and how the disclosure of such information might ruin her. ...
In this article we argue that the European Union directive on “the right to be forgotten” is unrealistic and suggest instead a series of principles that can protect us from the potentially harmful publication of private information. The dissemination of personal information through public and private databases as well as social media is gradually educating humanity about reality: humans are weak; everyone misbehaves; and we need to learn to accept public knowledge of the imperfections of ourselves and others.
... We also did not explore the prism of considering RTBF as a form of withholding knowledge (Gonçalves et al., 2023). Another issue that we did not cover, but may become more pertinent as the gender debate in academia widens, is RTBF in the context of gender transition (Correia et al., 2021;Korenhof & Koops, 2014). Finally, considering that generative artificial intelligence, for example ChatGPT, is able to generate fictitious citations (Day, 2023), which is a form of misinformation, authors whose names might appear in such fabricated citations might want to have the Right to retract false citations. ...
In this paper, we reflect on how the principle of the ‘right to be forgotten’ (RTBF), specifically the right to erasure as enshrined in Article 17 (and to some extent Art. 19 and Art. 21) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR; Regulation (EU) 2016/679), or the right to delete undesirable, unflattering or reputation‐damaging archived records of oneself from search engines or databases, might apply to academic publishing. In particular, we focus on archival (library and information) science, post‐publication peer review, and reflect on whether RTBF is compatible with open science principles. Even though RTBF became enshrined in EU law in 2018, its trans‐Atlantic export to the United States faces resistance because it is seen as being incompatible with First Amendment rights. We ponder the pertinence of the debate regarding local versus global applicability of RTBF when considering the transnational nature of some collaborative research. Although RTBF applies broadly to search engines such as Google, we question whether authors have this right and also whether publishers are subjected to this law with respect to science databases, or even ‘local’ (i.e., publisher‐controlled) archives, especially in the light of retractions or withdrawals, in which data and files are removed from a preprint or journal's website or, in extreme cases, where all or most bibliometric information is scrubbed clean, as in the case of ‘silent retractions’. We extend our reflections further to appreciate whether authors or editors are entitled to RTBF in extreme instances of misconduct or fraud. The fundamental right to privacy and personal choice, as is suggested by (or enshrined in) RTBF, is not—in our view—compatible with several principles related to the integrity of data and information, or even their preservation, and may be diametrically opposed, depending on the situation. We encourage wider debate on this budding pertinent issue as a fundamental aspect of academic rights and freedoms.
... Rather, what they ask is to gain better control over the story that is being told about them, in the digital sphere. They ask to maintain their ability to construct, edit and update their identity over the web (Carter, 2013;Korenhof & Koops, 2014). ...
Can a right to memory be counted among the rights society needs to safeguard, if so, what are its theoretical and conceptual foundations, and how do they relate to communications? We answer these questions by offering a new perspective regarding the right’s components, origin and justifications, the mechanisms needed to realize it and the legal framework required for such realization. We begin by first recognizing the fundamental role of memory in human life, in particular as it pertains to the creation, preservation, and endowment of identity, which justifies the need to protect it. We then discuss memory’s four elements—remembering, forgetting, being remembered, and being forgotten—and their dependence on communications. We follow by describing the nature of rights and the distinction between different types of rights. This helps us claim that recognizing the right to memory requires ensuring the capability to communicate by designing appropriate communication policies.
... Rather, they ask to gain better control over the story they tell -the story that is being told about them, in the digital sphere. They ask to maintain their ability to construct, edit, and update their identity over the web (Carter, 2013;Korenhof and Koops, 2014). ...
In 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) established the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ (RtbF). Since its establishment, more than 500,000 people filed requests with Google to be ‘de-listed’ from its search. At the same time, the Court’s decision has stirred debates focused on the tension the decision raised between a person’s right to privacy and freedom of expression. This study offers, yet, a different reading of the decision and its meaning. It first outlines the theoretical foundations of the concept of memory and its relation to rights. Then, it focuses on media, memory, and the RtbF. Afterward, the study discusses the legal origins of the RtbF and claims that the right is actually a right to construct one’s narrative. Therefore, in order to analyze the RtbF, this study places it within memory studies and analyzes it through its tools. From this perspective, this study criticizes the emphasis placed on forgetting in the definition of the right and problematizes its focus on individuals. Eventually, this study uses the legitimization the RtbF gives to a new discourse about memory in relation to rights in order to suggest an extended ‘right to memory’ that will answer the memory needs of our time.
... Agnes was not a figure of public interest, but that does not mean that she never will become such a figure. Indeed, the very fact that she is a female wanting to erase her past as a male might trigger the interest of the blogosphere, or of the data-protection community that focuses on her as a case to discuss the right to be forgotten (for example Korenhof and Koops, 2014), and this could then make her a public figure, so that her requests for erasing information could backfire. (Compare the case of S., the 'drunken pirate', who became something of a celebrity in newspapers and in the RtbF debate, featuring prominently in, for example Korenhof, 2013.) ...
Elk gegeven betreffende een geïdentificeerde of identificeerbare persoon is een persoonsgegeven, zo stelt de Nederlandse privacywet. Om een database met persoonsgegevens te anonimiseren kan de data worden ontdaan van burgerservicenummers en persoonsnamen. Er is dan geen sprake meer van ‘geïdentificeerde' personen. Maar wanneer is ook niet langer sprake van ‘identificéérbare' personen? In het onderzoek van Matthijs Koot staat de analyse van die vraag centraal. Hoe anoniem zijn geanonimiseerde gegevens? In hoeverre is het mogelijk geanonimiseerde gegevens te de-anonimiseren? In het kader van die vragen voerde hij een grootschalige empirische studie uit naar identificeerbaarheid van Nederlandse burgers via (deel)combinaties van postcode, geslacht en geboortedatum. Daaruit blijkt 67% van de onderzoekspopulatie uniek identificeerbaar binnen Nederland op basis van de vier cijfers van de postcode in combinatie met geboortedatum (gegevens die niet zelden afleidbaar zijn uit profielen op sociale media).
The first person to dredge up the word microhistory as a self-defined term was an American scholar, George R. Stewart, in 1959. Microhistory accepts the limitations while exploring their gnoseological implications and transforming them into a narrative element. Italian microhistory has confronted the question of comparison with a different and, in a certain sense, opposite approach: through the anomalous, not the analogous. First of all, it hypothesizes the more improbable sort of documentation as being potentially richer: the 'exceptional "normal"' of Edoardo Grendi's justly famous quip. Second, it demonstrates, as accomplished for example by Giovanni Levi and by Simona Cerutti, that any social structure is the result of interaction and of numerous individual strategies, a fabric that can only be reconstituted from close observation. It is significant that the relationship between this microscopic dimension and the larger contextual dimension became in both cases the organizing principle in the narration. Keywords: Edoardo Grendi; George R. Stewart; Giovanni Levi; Italian microhistory; Simona Cerutti
This article argues that the instances in which amateur users will fall under the ambit of data protection law are not the exception, but rather the rule. Based on an analysis of the provisions of the European Data Protection Directive, the article demonstrates that existing data protection law burdens amateur users with provisions that exceed the personal, technical and financial capacities of most Social Network Sites (SNS) users, that do not fit the SNS context or that users are simply not able to comply with without assistance from the SNS provider. While it is unacceptable to burden amateurs with a number of obligations that exceed their capacities, it is also not feasible to place all the burdens on SNS providers, since many of the privacy problems of SNSs are in fact user-made. All this points to a concept of joint-responsibility of SNS users and providers. The article concludes with a number of concrete suggestions on how such a concept of joint responsibility could be given form.
In the last couple of years research has shown that most social network sites pose serious privacy and security risks for
individual users. Based on the existing analyses of privacy and security risks in social network sites, we have clustered
these risks in two large categories. One category revolves around the notion of “audience segregation”, which is the partitioning
of different audiences and the compartmentalisation of social spheres. Since audience segregation is an important tool in
everyday interactions between people in the real world, we argue that social network sites ought to include this mechanism
as well. In this article we discuss the necessity of audience segregation in view of privacy and security in social network
sites and its lack in current social network sites. We then present a privacy-preserving social network site, called Clique
that is being developed to consistently provide audience segregation to users.
The paper outlines a new interpretation of informational privacy and of its moral value. The main theses defended are: (a)
informational privacy is a function of the ontological friction in the infosphere, that is, of the forces that oppose the
information flow within the space of information; (b) digital ICTs (information and communication technologies) affect the
ontological friction by changing the nature of the infosphere (re-ontologization); (c) digital ICTs can therefore both decrease
and protect informational privacy but, most importantly, they can also alter its nature and hence our understanding and appreciation
of it; (d) a change in our ontological perspective, brought about by digital ICTs, suggests considering each person as being
constituted by his or her information and hence regarding a breach of one’s informational privacy as a form of aggression
towards one’s personal identity.
In recent years research has shown that most social network sites pose serious privacy and security risks for individual users. From the existing analyses of privacy and security risks in social network sites we deduce that one of the biggest categories of privacy risks revolves around the notion of `audience segregation', i.e. the partitioning of different audiences and the compartmentalization of social spheres. Since audience segregation is an important mechanism in everyday interactions between people in the real world, we argue that social network sites ought to include this mechanism as well. Current social network sites lack this mechanism. We present Clique, a privacy-preserving social network site that provides `audience segregation' to its users as an alternative.
This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly touted—but their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generativity,” or innovative character—is at risk. The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.” The author has made an online version of this work available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. It can be accessed through the author’s Web site at http://www.jz.org.
Information on the Internet can sometimes damage people by interfering with offline life. A high-school teacher-in-training experienced this firsthand when a photo with the caption “drunken pirate” and a message on her MySpace website led to the end of her career as a teacher. This case received a lot of media attention and is used in academic debate as illustrating the need for a “right to be forgotten”. The question is how and to what extent the Internet contributed to the fact that the teacher-in-training’s information ended up with the wrong audience. The problems in this case did not arise due to any memory related capacities of the Internet or the Internet being a place where information can be easily copied and reproduced. The problems arose because audience segregation on the Internet is a difficult task.
Amalgamating the languages of scientific and literary approaches, this essay is meant to establish a common thread that runs through the separate topics of data protection literature—a leitmotif centered on the issues of remembering and forgetting, if you will.
The Web initially emerged as an “antidote” to accumulated scientific knowledge, since it enables global representation and communication at a minimum cost. Its gigantic scale and interdependence allow us our ability to find relevant information and develop trustworthy contexts. It is time for science to compensate by providing an epistemological “antidote” to Web issues. Philosophy should be in the front line by forming the salient questions and analysis. We need a theory about Web being that will bridge philosophical thinking and engineering. This article analyzes existence and spatiotemporality in the Web and how it transforms the traditional actualities. The resulting issues concern the self‐determination of a being and the way in which the Web could be a free and open platform for innovation and participation.
Delete looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we've searched for and when. The digital realm remembers what is sometimes better forgotten, and this has profound implications for us all.InDelete, Viktor Mayer-Sch nberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget--the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Mayer-Sch nberger examines the technology that's facilitating the end of forgetting--digitization, cheap storage and easy retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software--and describes the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it's outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won't let us forget. He explains why information privacy rights and other fixes can't help us, and proposes an ingeniously simple solution--expiration dates on information--that may.Deleteis an eye-opening book that will help us remember how to forget in the digital age.
This article proposes a new conceptualization of the right to be forgotten, arguing in favour of its theoretical construction and concrete application under the umbrella of the right to identity. Following this perspective, I intend to shed new light on the right to be forgotten, contributing to a more developed conceptualization and enforceability while clarifying its scope of application.Based on the distinction between the right to identity and that of privacy, the paper presents the advantages of associating the right to be forgotten with the right to identity. Through this identity oriented conceptualization, I claim that the right to be forgotten should also be applied to user-generated content and information processed for personal purposes, overriding the ‘household exemption’ established in the European Data Protection Directive. I also argue that the right to oblivion, framed as part of the right to personal identity, should address public facts and information, providing a stronger rationale and justification to attain a better and fairer balance with the competing right to freedom of information.The article then comments on the most relevant conflicts that the right to be forgotten will have to address vis-à-vis the freedom of expression and the need to preserve social memory. As a branch of the right to identity, the right to be forgotten is presented as the right to be different, not from others but from oneself, i.e. from the one(s) we were before. The right to be forgotten also underlines the process of identity creation as not only constructive but also de-constructive.
The current consensus is that information, once online, is there forever. Content permanence has led many European countries, the European Union, and even the United States to establish a right to be forgotten to protect citizens from the shackles of the past presented by the Internet. But, the Internet has not defeated time, and information, like everything, gets old, decays, and dies, even online. Quite the opposite of permanent, the Web cannot be self-preserving. One study from the field of content persistence, a body of research that has been almost wholly overlooked by legal scholars, found that 85% of content disappears in a year and that 59% disappears in a week, signifying a decrease in the lifespan of online content when compared with previous studies. Those that have debated this privacy issue have consistently done so in terms of permanence and also neglected an important consideration: the changing nature of information over time. Our efforts to address disputes arising from old personal information residing online should focus on the changing value, uses, and needs of information over time and the ethics of preservation. Understanding how information changes over time in relation to its subject, how and where personal information resides online longer than deemed appropriate, and what information is important for preservation allows regulation to be tailored to the problem, correctly framed. This understanding requires an interdisciplinary approach and the inclusion of research from telecommunications, information theory, information science, behavioral and social sciences, and computer sciences. Recognizing that information does not last forever, this article takes the initial step of outlining an information life cycle in terms of phases in relation to information needs, creating a taxonomy to help assess the competing values at stake when one seeks to have old personal information “forgotten.” Some of the proposed legislation make exceptions for historical, statistical, and public safety needs, but none of them include time, a vital element to the information life cycle. The article concludes by working through specific issues like revived interest, the integrity and objectivity of the Internet, and the importance of time in protecting the interests other information needs. Permanence is not yet upon us, and therefore, now is the time to develop policies and practices that will support good decisions, preserve our cultural history, and protect the future of the past, as well as protect the privacy rights of individuals that will live with the information and a society that may suffer from the threat of a permanent record.
The American Diabetes Association currently recommends that all youth with type 1 diabetes over the age of 7 years follow a plan of intensive management. The purpose of this study was to describe stressors and self-care challenges reported by adolescents with type 1 diabetes who were undergoing initiation of intensive management. Subjects described initiation of intensive management as complicating the dilemmas they faced. The importance of individualized and nonjudgmental care from parents and health care providers was stressed. This study supports development of health care relationships and environments that are teen focused not merely disease-centered and embrace exploring options with the teen that will enhance positive outcomes.
The most influential theory of group behavior that has ever been developed is currently in disfavor. This is the theory of the group mind. Social commentators once found it very useful to analyze the behavior of groups by the same expedient used in analyzing the behavior of individuals. The group, like the person, was assumed to be sentient, to have a form of mental activity that guides action. Rousseau (1767) and Hegel (1807) were the early architects of this form of analysis, and it became so widely used in the 19th and early 20th centuries that almost every early social theorist we now recognize as a contributor to modern social psychology held a similar view. McDougall, Ross, Durkheim, Wundt, and LeBon, to name just a few, were willing to assume that the group has a mental life that plays a part in the patterning of group behavior.
The so-called 'right to be forgotten' has been put firmly on the agenda, both of academia and of policy. Although the idea is intuitive and appealing, the legal form and practical implications of a right to be forgotten have hardly been analyzed so far. This contribution aims to critically assess what a right to be forgotten could or should entail in practice. It outlines the current socio-technical context as one of Big Data, in which massive data collections are created and mined for many purposes. Big Data involves not only individuals’ digital footprints (data they themselves leave behind) but, perhaps more importantly, also individuals’ data shadows (information about them generated by others). And contrary to physical footprints and shadows, their digital counterparts are not ephemeral but persistent. This presents particular challenges for the right to be forgotten, which are discussed in the form of three key questions. Against whom can the right be invoked? When and why can the right be invoked? And how can the right be effected? Advocates of a right to be forgotten must clarify which conceptualization of such a right they favor – a comprehensive, user-control-based right to have data deleted in due time, or a narrower, context-specific right to a 'clean slate' – and how they think the considerable obstacles presented in this paper can be overcome, if people are really to be enabled to have their digital footprints forgotten and to shun their data shadows.
The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can "Google" the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.
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