As recently remarked on over at the Bits blog, tech companies like Facebook are increasingly fond of making the “economy versus privacy” argument. It goes something like this:  Because they create jobs and generate growth in an otherwise bleak landscape of rising unemployment and negative growth, it would be foolish to burden innovative technology firms with privacy laws that could jeopardise these rare economic boons. Facebook has commissioned a study to this end, suggesting the company brings £2.2 billion to UK PLC and supports a further 35,200 jobs in sectors that are dependent on the popular social networking site. Their CEO Sheryl Sandberg recently commented “we want to make sure we have the right regulatory environment — a regulatory environment that promotes innovation and economic growth.” Mark Zuckerberg has in the past also not shied away from expressing his belief that privacy is no longer a social norm.

Today, the European Commission formally proposed amendments to the 1995 Protection of Personal Data Directive.  These proposals include a “right to be forgotten” clause, allowing people to delete their personal information from a website if there is no legitimate basis for the company to retain it. Facebook claims however that far from wanting to delete their personal data, most Facebook users prefer having their details retained indefinitely. According to Richard Allan, Facebook’s Director of European Policy, “they want us to give them a guarantee that data will remain available in ten or 15 years’ time so they have a record of how things changed over time.” The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) also appears sceptical of an ‘rtbf’ clause, fearing that it could “mislead individuals and falsely raise their expectations, and be impossible to implement and enforce in practice.”

Sandberg, Zuckerberg and Allan frame the privacy debate as progress and economic prosperity versus anachronism and bureaucracy. As these amendments are debated over the coming months, we will get some measure of exactly just how anachronistic privacy really is to Europeans.