EU data protection directive

More than a dozen consumer and civil liberties groups sent a letter  to the Obama administration urging the United States to support Europe's efforts to update and strengthen privacy legislation while decrying an "unprecedented lobbying campaign" by the U.S. government and industry to limit the protections that the proposed  European Union data protection directive  would provide.

The right to be forgotten "has to be limited to the point where we're talking about judicially, clearly examined, illegal violations of rights," said Alexander Alvaro, the German vice president of the European Parliament, while speaking Dec. 4. an event of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee in Washington, D.C.

Alexander Alvaro , a German member of the European Parliament and a governor of the European Internet Foundation ("political leadership for network society"), spoke Dec. 4 on European privacy issues during an event of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee .

If the European Parliament approves a right to be forgotten as part of a data protection  proposal  unveiled earlier this year, it's very possible the result will be large-scale search engine filtering, says the European Network and Information Security Agency. In a  paper  (.pdf) released Nov. 20,  the agency says technical means alone don't exist that would permit individuals to control the distribution of information about them on the open Internet.