US Companies May Need to Comply on Right to Be Forgotten Even Without US Law, Lawyers Say
U.S. companies will likely need to comply with the EU “right to be forgotten” even if it’s never enshrined in U.S. law, privacy lawyers said Wednesday during a Bloomberg BNA webinar. The EU right to be forgotten policy, enshrined in…
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a 2014 European Court of Justice ruling (see 1412160022) and in the European Parliament and Commission’s proposed general approach on data protection reform (see 1506150001), has long been a source of concern for U.S. companies already at “loggerheads” with the EU on other issues, said Kramer Levin Internet and privacy lawyer Kevin Moss. Many of those companies already operate in EU member nations, where governments would argue that U.S. companies are subject to their data protection laws, Dentons lawyer Andy Roth said. “Europe and Silicon Valley are on a collision course.” U.S. companies may face similar difficulties elsewhere on the right to be forgotten, because “a lot of the world is moving closer to the EU model,” Roth said. It would be difficult to codify an EU-style right to be forgotten into U.S. law, given differing interpretations of the right to privacy, Cohen & Gresser lawyer Karen Bromberg said. U.S. courts recognize a right to privacy within the Fourth Amendment and in other case law, but arguments citing the First Amendment tend to “trump” those claims, she said. The publication of a person’s criminal history, one of several issues often cited in arguments favoring the right to be forgotten, is explicitly protected under the First Amendment, Bromberg said.