Limits on the Application of the Right to Be Forgotten to Criminal Records on Public Interest Grounds in Indonesia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69916/iuris.v4i2.627Keywords:
Right to Be Forgotten, Criminal Records, Public Interest, Privacy, ProportionalityAbstract
The persistence of online criminal records creates tension between privacy and rehabilitation and the competing interests of freedom of expression, press freedom, and public access to information. This study examines the sub-stantive and procedural limits of applying the right to be forgotten (RTBF) to criminal records in Indonesia. It employs normative legal research using statutory, conceptual, case, and limited comparative approaches. Legal ma-terials are analysed qualitatively and prescriptively through grammatical, systematic, and teleological interpretation, supported by a proportionality test. The findings reveal that Indonesia’s legal framework, comprising the Electronic Information and Transactions Law, Government Regulation No. 71 of 2019, and the Personal Data Protection Law,
lacks comprehensive criteria for determining when criminal records become irrelevant or when public interest justifies their continued accessibility. This regulatory gap risks inconsistent decisions and insufficient consideration of affected parties. The study argues that RTBF is not an absolute entitlement to erase historical information but requires con-textual assessment of accuracy, legal status, offence seriousness, elapsed time, rehabilitation, the data subject’s public or professional role, victims’ interests, risks to vulnerable groups, and journalistic, scientific, and historical value.
Its principal contribution is a graduated remedial framework prioritising correction, updating, anonymisation, access restriction, and de-indexing before source deletion. The study further proposes procedurally fair judicial proceedings that enable affected parties to participate and require transparent proportionality reasoning. These proposals provide normative guidance for reconciling privacy protection and social reintegration with freedom of expression and legitimate public interest in Indonesia’s digital environmen
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Copyright (c) 2026 Ayu Riska Amalia, Atika Zahra Nirmala, Zahratul ‘Ain Taufik, Hafina Haula Arsy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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