Exercising the Legal Right to be Forgotten: The Need for an Improved Data Protection and Surveillance Regulation of the Fast-Growing Digital Technology within the Global Space

Abstract

It is the basic duty of nations to guarantee and ensure protection and enforcement of human rights through fundamental establishment of institutional legal frameworks to that effect. This study takes critical look at the efficacy of the available legal mechanisms on the practicability of the exercise of the right to be forgotten. The right to be forgotten is considered to have derived from the human right to privacy, having been established in the case of Costeja Gonzalez and thereafter codified under the General Data Protection Regulation. The right to be forgotten allows a data subject to seek the pulling down of any uncomfortable online personal data from search engines like Google and Amazon. Various territorial jurisdictions have developed diverse concepts and approaches towards the right to be forgotten which is hereunder exhaustively defined in line with the perceptions of different authors and provisions of enabling and extant laws. There are certain conditions that must be satisfied before the exercise of the right to be forgotten can effectively be activated. There is no iron-cast procedure to be followed in the processing of a proper delisting of the personal data of a data subject; but in practice a modality has been adopted by some countries; just as a request for the exercise to be forgotten can be refused for certain reasons like the overriding public interest. Some jurisdictions have allowed extra-territorial application of the right to be forgotten and the sharing of similar data base given the global access to most search engines. Although the right to be forgotten tends to be quite relevant, criticisms abounds, leaving room for improvements, hence this study concludes with recommendations for better modalities towards achieving a more protective and surveillance regulation of the usage of technology to enhance effectual exercise of the legal right to be forgotten.