Forget Me Google!

Article on the Right to be Forgotten regarding the reform to the Regulation of Law 8968.

Thanks to the progressive universalization of the internet and the liberalization of its access, the triumph of social media and free creation of websites, we find ourselves facing a limitless digital world. Big data usage has become an essential part of our day to day. Companies haven't been fools about it, they've known how to take advantage, especially of the generalized disregard that still reigns in the grand majority of internet users.

While this grants great benefits to society, it also supposes a notable risk to individual's privacy. The ease with which information is accessed is a double-edged knife, because it limits the capacity to select the data. Both images freely posted online as well as -in extreme cases- sensible data such as our banking information can be accessed, as well as our political or religious opinions which we believe to be private in a blog or post that can leave us in a compromising situation with third parties.

We speak about everything. Everything that interests us, that surrounds us, can be accessed through the internet. Companies know this... And so does Google.

This triumphing search engine is our biggest ally online, but it can also be our worst enemy. We find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, Google is who helps us find everything we need (like a "21st-century mother"), but it also collects all our data and is the leading company in selling it to third parties.

However, thanks to the Regulation of Law 89868 of Data Protection of the Republic of Costa Rica and its recent reform, we found an escape route from this situation with companies that have our data. We find it in article 11 of said Regulation, because of a new wording of the reform published in La Gaceta on December 6th, 2016, through which it is not allowed to store data for a longer period than 10 years once the relationship that permitted it has ended unless previously agreed upon.

The Right to be Forgotten doesn't emerge as new fundamental right, but as a projection of the rights to intimacy and data protection, over which many postures have been made both in favor and against.

Its detractors argue that seeing this right in this way is a possible alteration of history and a brake on the right of information, being that if it is implemented in digital cases such as the one we're discussing, it should be against the one in...