The UK is on a collision course with Brussels over strict new data laws which would give consumers the right to be forgotten, after the Information Commissioner’s Office claimed the plans would be misleading, unenforceable and even hit free speech.
The proposal is part of EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s blueprint for a revised EU Data Protection Directive and have already been attacked by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey. It has also been claimed they could “wreak havoc” with the online powerhouses including Google and Facebook.
In a briefing on what it would like revised EU data protection laws to provide, the ICO stated: “The framework should not introduce a standalone ‘right to be forgotten’ which could mislead individuals and falsely raise their expectations, and be impossible to implement and enforce in practice.
“There are implications for freedom of expression and questions as to how far individuals should be able rewrite their own or others’ history,” the ICO added.
The ICO said it wants the EU laws to “clarify the relationship between transparency and consent and be realistic about the levels of individual control”. Reding has said the new laws will force organisations – including search engines and social media sites – to obtain explicit prior consent from individuals before they can process their personal data.
The UK data watchdog also wants consumers to be able to use technology to access their personal data and be able to “move their data around and have it in a reusable format”.
The Department for Business, Skills and Innovation (BIS) recently announced that 19 major brands, including Google, Royal Bank of Scotland, British Gas and Visa, had all signed up to enable consumers to manage their personal data via an electronic data sharing initiative, dubbed midata.
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