Right to be forgotten discussed in Kazakhstan's Majilis

The so-called 'right to be forgotten', which allows individuals to have information, videos or photographs that infringe on their privacy deleted from Internet records, has been discussed at the plenary session of Majilis, the lower chamber of Kazakhstan’s Parliament, Tengrinews reports.

The person seeking 'to be forgotten' will need to approach the court and request a ruling that certain data related to him or her is deleted and removed from search results, so that no third persons can any longer access it.

“Today the protection of personal data and the information security play a very big role. Such term as the right to be forgotten is used worldwide. It means the right of an individual to have his or her personal data deleted from search engines under certain circumstances. This information may be harmful to the person or may be outdated. There are many different factors. For example, last year a 17-year-old girl from Aktobe committed suicide because of her photo in Vkontakte social network that received indecent comments. We, member of the Parliament, also have to deal with fake accounts (in social networks),” Majilis deputy Tursunbek Omurzakov said during the plenary session. 

Vice Minister of Investments and Development of Kazakhstan Askar Zhumagaliyev tried to answer his question. “The right to be forgotten is a highly debated issue these days. Remember the recent statements of Schegolev in the media, who once worked as Minister of Communications and Mass Media of Russia, he was speaking about just that. We are now considering these issues together with the relevant state agencies. When this work is completed, we will present our suggestions,” Zhumagaliyev said.

Former Communications Minister of Russia Igor Shchegolev, who now serves as a presidential aide, spoke about it on April 20. In particular, he said that the Russian legislation allowed citizen to approach the court with a request to have information concerning them removed from search results. 

There have been cases of people requesting 'to be forgotten' in the EU as well. In the "Right to be Forgotten" ruling the Court of Justice of the European Union said: "Individual have the right - under cent rain conditions - to ask search engines to remove links with personal information about them. This applies where the information is inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive." But the European court clarified that the right to be forgotten was not absolute and had to be balanced against other fundamental rights, such as freedom of expressing and of the media, in every individual case.    

Reporting by Renat Tashkinbayev, writing by Assel Satubaldina, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina