SPECIAL COLLECTION OF THE CASE LAW ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION Secondly, the practice represents a direct threat to freedom of the press. A lot of the requests in which the “right to be forgotten” is invoked are focused on journalistic materials, which have an a priori presumption of being produced in the public interest, a kind of speech specially protected by freedom of expression. Furthermore, journalistic pieces tend to focus on complex stories with more than one person involved. A request to de-index certain content from a specific news item might have overbearing effects and rattle the capacity of the story to tell a complete picture, specially when the person making the request is only part of it. This can have major consequences on stories that have international relevance, and may have a disproportionate impact in different jurisdictions. For instance, the Latin-American region has made an important effort to preserve the right to truth and memory given its past with military dictatorships. Journalistic work has been fundamental for such efforts. The de-indexing of sources can have a direct impact on rights to truth and memory, which would undermine democratic values. Finally, and again following the proportionality analysis favored internationally to assess restrictions on freedom of expression, there are several less intrusive means to deal with a piece of information that could harm someone’s public image Latin-American region has or impact his or her privacy. Some of these measures include permitting a rebuttal, allowing for the intromade an important effort to duction of a disclaimer notice in the contested news preserve the right to truth and or even expanding the original piece of information memory given its past with with informative, useful, and truthful updates. All these remedies, that could be considered by courts military dictatorships. in the course of adjudicating concrete demands but also by legislators when drafting legislation, should also consider the freedom of expression interests of publishers, who should be included in these procedures in order to fully respect due process of law. The second foundational critique often raised against de-indexing is that it rests on the framing of the issue as individuals having a “right to be forgotten”. It is undisputed that as digital technologies develop, it is important that data protection legislation grant individuals the possibility to erase personal data they no longer wish to share. However, de-indexing certain pieces of personal data from a database—including data bases that are available to the public—is not equal to a right to be “forgotten”, nor is there a right to such a thing. Processes of memory—including both remembrance and forgetting—are inherently social, and individuals cannot make unqualified claims to be “forgotten” by others. She may have a right to have certain personal data removed from certain databases, but that does not mean that she has an absolute right to manipulate public records simply because certain information pertaining to her past is—to her— somewhat regrettable. This narrow and more realistic approach is more useful for careful legal analyses, and makes drawing necessary distinctions easier. Hence, for instance, removing a person’s buying habits from a marketing company database may hinder the company’s operations, but does no affect freedom of expression in any way. Removing news items that legitimately discuss the claimant’s past is a whole different story. Focusing on specific pieces of personal data 8