Personal Data Protection and Safeguarding Draft Act June 2019 and the right to receive and impart information, confidentiality of correspondence and communications, or business or commercial secrecy and other legally protected secrets. This should apply in particular to processing of personal data in the audio-visual field and in news archives and press libraries. In order to take account of the importance of the right to freedom of expression in every democratic society, it is necessary to interpret notions relating to that freedom, such as journalism, broadly. At the domestic level, a journalistic exemption has been incorporated in most data protection laws around the world including those in the region. The Data Protection Law in Turkey provides for exceptions with regards personal data processed within the scope of freedom of expression.74 In Bahrain,75 Lebanon,76 and Algeria,77 the data protection laws exclude from their scope of application the processing of personal data for the purposes of the exercise of journalistic activity. 2. The Right to be Forgotten Article 9 of the Draft Law states that, “Requests to process or cease to process personal data can be done with the aim of forgetting provided that there is no other beneficiary ”. In our understanding, this provision constitutes an attempt to introduce the “right to be forgotten” in the Draft Act and into Iranian law. The provision lacks clarity in establishing the right to make requests to process or stop processing with the “aim of forgetting” without establishing any limits. It appears to give any person, no matter their official or public position or the public interest, an absolute right in demanding that information related to their actions be deleted. The right to be forgotten was first examined by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the Google Spain case. Under this right, data subjects have a right to request Google and other search engines operating in the EU to de-list links to results generated by a search for their name except when there were public interest considerations. Under international law, the right to be forgotten is not an absolute right and freedom of expression must be considered. The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, in his 2016 report, provided a global review of issues affecting free expression on the internet, including the right to be forgotten, and reminded states of their obligations under the ICCPR: Any demands, requests and other measures to take down digital content or access customer information must be based on validly enacted law, subject to external and independent oversight, and demonstrate a necessary and proportionate means of achieving one or more aims under article 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Particularly in the context of regulating the private sector, State laws and policies must be transparently adopted and implemented.78 In the CJEU’s judgement mentioned above, the Court explicitly clarified that the right to be forgotten is not absolute but will always need to be balanced against other fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression and of the media. It held in particular: As the data subject may, in the light of his fundamental rights under Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, request that the information in question no longer be made available to the general public by its inclusion in such a list of results, it should be held… that those rights override, as a rule, not only the economic interest of the operator of the search engine but also the interest of the general public in finding that information upon a search relating to the data subject’s name. However, that would not be the case if it appeared, for particular reasons, such as the role played by the data 74 Turkey Law on the Protection of Personal Data, Art 28 (d). 75 Bahrain Law No. (30) for the year 2018 Issuing the Personal Data Protection Act, Art. 6. 76 Lebanon Law n. 81 Relating to Electronic Transactions and Personal Data, Art. 105. 77 Algeria Law on the Protection of physical persons for the processing of personal data, 10 June 2018, Art. 29. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, to the Human Rights Council, 11 May 2016. 78 ARTICLE 19 – Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Rd, London EC1R 3GA – www.article19.org – +44 20 7324 2500 Page 23 of 58