Episode 48 - The Right to Be Forgotten

by Angela Brinckerhoff

In today’s world, it’s not very hard to find information about anyone, no matter how personal. Our posts, public records, employment history, etc. can all be uncovered within a few clicks. A University of Washington team of researchers created a project called Vanish to address this, making it possible to permanently erase personal data. This project brings up the central debate of the “right to be forgotten” movement, discussing the legality and prospect of deleting data from public databases and web searches. This podcast discusses the system behind Vanish and the different sides of the “right to be forgotten” debate. Special thanks to Amelia Muir, Henoc Zinga, and Justin Terry for their contributions.

References
Auxier, B. (2020, August 17). Most Americans support right to have some personal info removed from online searches. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/27/most-americans-support-right-to-have-some-personal-info-removed-from-online-searches/

DeWeerdt, S. (2021, April 15). A Welcome Disappearing Act. Retrieved from
https://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/dec09/findings-forget.html

Geambasu, Roxana et. al. (2021, April 15). Enhancing the Privacy of the Web with
Self-Destructing Data. Retrieved from https://vanish.cs.washington.edu/

Heilweil, R. (2018, March 05). How Close Is An American Right-To-Be-Forgotten? Forbes. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaheilweil1/2018/03/04/how-close-is-an-american-right-to-be-forgotten/

Markoff, J. (2009, July 20). New Technology to Make Digital Data Self-Destruct. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/21crypto.html

Audio Sources:
https://orangefreesounds.com/swing-drum-beat-loop-with-piano-melody-132-bpm/
https://orangefreesounds.com/funk-guitar-intro/
https://orangefreesounds.com/electronic-background-music/
https://orangefreesounds.com/ocean-waves-crashing-on-beach/
https://orangefreesounds.com/mysterious-piano/
https://orangefreesounds.com/downtempo-chill-out-track/

Image: “Footprints in the sand,” Susanne Nilsson, Flickr CC BY-SA