When we lose control of personal information, we lose control Of who we are and who we can be, thus losing our autonomyMcFarland, Michael. "Why We Care About Privacy." Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa

Clara University. October 09, 1999. Web. October 07, 2014.

<http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/technology/Internet/privacy/why-careabout-

privacy.html>.

The analysis of Rachels and Fried suggests a deeper and more fundamental issue: personal freedom. As Deborah Johnson has observed, "To recognize an individual as an autonomous being , an end in himself, entails letting that individual live his life as he chooses. Of course, there are limits to this, but one of the critical ways that an individual controls his life is by choosing with whom he will have relationships and what kind of relationships these will be .... Information mediates relationships. Thus when one cannot control who has information about one, one loses considerable autonomy. "

Walker, RobertKirk. "The Right To Be Forgotten." Hastings Law Journal Vol. 64, Issue 101.

September 09, 2014. Web. October 02, 2014.

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2017967>.

However, even though applying the full weight of the right to be forgotten would be unconstitutional, the First Amendment does not proscribe all potential data deletion rights. The First Amendment not only grants Internet users a right to speak, but also the right not to speak. “The right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind.’”135 Moreover, the First Amendment does not compel anyone to speak, nor does it forbid voluntary agreements not to speak.137 Therefore, just as Nell may exercise her right to free expression by posting photographs on her website, she also has a right to stop speaking by removing the pictures, thereby muting the instrument of her speech. Similarly, nothing in the First Amendment forbids Nell from entering into a contract with her website hosting company where she could mandate that data she posts be permanently removed from their servers upon request. In instances where a user submits her own personal data to a website and then demands removal, both actions are variations on the same underlying constitutional right. As such, a circumscribed version of the right to be forgotten—a right to delete voluntarily submitted data—would not offend the First Amendment.

Mark Tushnet, Civil Rights and Social Rights: The Future of the Reconstruction Amendments, 25 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 1207 (1992).

Available at: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol25/iss4/6

The preface to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for example, provides that rights are "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."23 One can imagine a constitution that

protects social and economic rights with an analogous preface. Indeed, the standard formulation that the rights are to be provided to the degree compatible with the society's level of economic development seems a suitable transformation. This formulation is an expression of the underlying idea that rights are qualified by the social setting-the values of a free

and democratic society in one case, the level of economic development in the other-in which they are exercised or guaranteed.