The "Right to be Forgotten" should NOT be a civil right

:) The resolution is worded strangely, but I am debating FOR, or PRO for the right to be forgotten. Billy Graham was once quoted in saying, “Once you’ve lost your privacy, you realize you’ve lost an extremely valuable thing. ” When information makes it’s way to the internet, privacy, indeed a valuable thing, is gone. Without it, every action, thought, and idea is exposed and open for public scrutiny. This opens the door for utter insecurity. Often times, there is no possibility or self government that will allow taking that information down completely. The right to be forgotten upholds moral values and would greatly assist individuals who are being harmed by internet information; therefore, I stand Resolved: that the right to be forgotten from internet searches ought to be a civil right. For purposes of clarification, the following terms are defined as such: Right to be Forgotten: defined by Jasmine McNealy, Prof. of Law, Catholic U. , (Rutgers Law Review, Summer 2013) “The right to be forgotten is an emerging privacy-related tool for plaintiffs in order to have information about them removed from retention by organizations and availability online. The boundaries of the right to be forgotten have yet to be concretely defined, but draft legislation from the EU provides some guidance as to how such a right would be codified. The law would allow an individual, claiming to be able to be identified by certain information, to demand that an organization remove that information immediately. The organization would have to comply or face possible court ordered sanctions. ” C1: The right to be forgotten is necessary Information which should not be is often posted on the internet, and the opportunity to take it down is often unavailable. Individuals should have the right to safeguard it when the issue concerns his or her individual privacy, safety or security. The RTBF should be given to prevent personal information from being disclosed. Alexander Tsesis, Prof. Law, Loyola U. Chicago Law School, Wake Forest Law Review, Summer 2014 “Requiring companies to purge the information from their files after an expiration period, as the right to erasure purposes, will diminish the amount of personal detail that can inadvertently be revealed. ” Even if companies are not purposely harming people, information held by these companies can be used for malicious purposes without intent of the company. Individuals shouldn’t have his or her security or privacy accidentally violated when it can be circumvented. Conserving these rights to only the involved individuals is morally correct, and certainly necessary. C2: Breaches of privacy can serve as a detriment to security When false, or otherwise personal, information is published on the internet, it poses the risk of becoming detrimental to a person’s life. Given the long memory of the internet, one personal indiscretion, whether it be true or false, can destroy a person’s future. Allyson Stuart, Prof. Law, Charleston School of Law, North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, March 2014 “Search results impact our personal and professional lives. It is now common practice to “Google” everyone from a potential employee or student to a potential date. Google has the power to make or break a person’s personal or professional reputation, “to exclude content or make an overnight cultural sensation. ”The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has noted the way search impacts the attainability of information, stating “If someone wants to know whether his neighbor or potential employee has been indicted for, convicted of, or pled guilty to a federal offense, he may well find out by simply entering a Google search for that person’s name. ” Recent surveys found that 79% of employers, 20% of universities, and 40% of law schools search applicants online. The problem is that stories may be decades old, arrests that have been expunged, or lawsuits that have been found without merit may top search results based on a query of only a name. “Rumors about a person’s health status, incompetence, or nastiness can percolate in blogs and message boards for years. Search engines can then increase the salience of such information, making a single mistake or scandal the dominant image of a person online. " With the background checks becoming common procedure, any legal infractions from the past could be the deciding factors in employment decisions. The problem with this approach is that it leaves out the possibility that the individual has changed. Allowing an individual the erasure privilege of these former violations would appropriately assist the changed individuals. Furthermore, these breaches of privacy can cause insecurity, a whole new problem. As we can see, the right to be forgotten as a civil right gives only benfits to citizens, and should be implemented.