EU s Data Protection Reform and the right
to be forgotten - A legal response
to a technological challenge?
Lilian Mitrou & Maria Karyda
1. Introduction
Since the adoption of the European Data Protection Directive in 1995 we have
experienced dramatic technological changes. We could describe this new situ-
ation as a “Data Deluge”
1
strictly related to and combined with accessibility,
durability and comprehensiveness of digital information
2
. Advances in search
algorithms
3
, exponentially increasing storage capacity in combination with de-
creasing costs, information seeking behaviour, content creation and management
practices threaten to erode what we understand as societal forgetting. Personal
information may be copied, tagged, reposted and stored virtually forever. Persist-
ency and wide availability of information threaten to infringe core principles of
data protection, such as the purpose limitation and proportionality principles, as
well as fundamental rights of individuals, like the right to oblivion.
Technological, social and economic phenomena like cloud computing, online so-
cial networks, intensive (if not aggressive) behavioural online advertising as well
as globalisation (of data flows) have profoundly transformed the way in which
personal data are processed and used and maximized problems and risks we have
1. See Blanchette, (2011), p. 25 f.. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) also refers
to “data deluge” (EDPS 2010).
2. The EU Council “Future Group” looked forward to a “digital tsunami” of personal data, with
the Council Presidency stating that “every object the individual uses, every transaction they
make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record. This will gener-
ate a wealth of information for public security organisations, and create huge opportunities
for more effective and productive public security efforts”. See Portuguese Presidency, Public
Security, Privacy and Technology in Europe: Moving Forward - Concept Paper on the Euro-
pean strategy to transform Public security organizations in a Connected World. - Available at:
. Accessed
June 10, 2013.
3. The so called “Semantic Web” (or WEB 3.0
),
while enabling the sharing of information and
personalization of searches improves furthermore the functionality and usability of search en-
gines and increases profiling and monitoring of users (Giannakaki 2011).
