EU leaders say people deserve ‘right to be forgotten’ online

The European Union is debating whether its citizens have a "right to be forgotten" on the Internet.

Led by Germany and Spain, Europe is pressing Google to give its users the option of removing unflattering articles from its index, so they no longer show up in searches. In Spain, officials have demanded that Google remove "out of date" articles involving around 90 people who have filed complaints. One complaint comes from a doctor who was charged but acquitted of malpractice in the 1990s. According to the BBC, his Google results show only stories about his arrest, and nothing about his eventual acquittal.

"Internet users must have effective control of what they put online, and be able to correct, withdraw or delete it at will," Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, said last year, according to the BBC. "The right to be forgotten is essential in today's world."

In the United States, questions of online privacy have largely been limited to whether Americans should have the right to join a "do not track" list that says marketers are not allowed to monitor what Internet users are doing online and then target ads to them with that information. American politicians have introduced at least four privacy bills this year, though none have passed, Reuters says.

When it comes to removing true but unflattering information from any publication or medium, American courts have consistently ruled on the side of free speech. The European perspective, meanwhile, "was shaped by the way information was collected and used against individuals under dictators like Franco and Hitler and under Communism," an article in the New York Times notes. "Government agencies routinely compiled dossiers on citizens as a means of control."

Omar Tene of the College of Management School of Law, Rishon Le Zion, Israel, put it this way in an article on the website of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "An individual seeking privacy protection in the United States asks 'leave me alone,'" Tene wrote. "Conversely, in Europe, an individual seeking privacy demands 'respect me.'"

Google is fighting the Spanish case in the European Union's highest court. In May, Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, warned Europe not to pass "foolish" laws that would make Google "illegal" in their countries, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Here are a few other interesting legal battles and debates over online privacy in the European Union:

-Nearly 250,000 Germans "opted out" of Google's Street View feature as of last year, according to Der Spiegel. Their homes are blurred from the site's signature panoramic map view. In the United States, people can retroactively ask that their homes be blurred out from Street View by clicking "report a problem" and filling out a form on their Street View image. Google spokeswoman Deanna Yick said the company doesn't know how many Americans have asked for their homes to be blurred.

-Two convicted killers in Germany, Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber, are suing Wikipedia to remove their names from a description of their crime on the English-language site. Privacy laws in Germany say once criminals have served their sentences, news stories about their former crimes should no longer list their names.

-Germany is also insisting that Facebook disable its "facial recognition" photo feature, likening it to biometric data, according to PC Magazine. Facebook says the new feature doesn't violate EU privacy law.

-In 2000, France sued Yahoo! and ordered the company to block access in the country to auctions of Nazi memorabilia. The site blocked the auctions a year later, but denied that the decision was a result of the suit, according to the Guardian.

-In February of 2010, a judge in Milan, Italy convicted three Google executives for violations of privacy law after a video was uploaded by a third party in 2006 showing an Italian boy with autism being bullied.