In today’s world of information technology, the right to privacy is one of the most precious rights that man must defend against the ever-increasing threat corporations and State actions pose. This right is recognized in the Declaration of Human Rights and of the Citizen, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights, whose international treaties are now an integral part of Mexican Constitution. Likewise, the right to privacy is protected in our supreme law in various precepts such as Articles 4, 6, 7, 16, 20 and others that indirectly safeguard privacy. Defining intimacy is certainly difficult, but we all sense in what it consists. For example, the dictionary of the Royal Academy defines it as “an intimate and reserved spiritual area of a person or a group, especially of a family”. From the proliferation of Facebook and Twitter thousands of thousands of people imitate the behaviors of Hollywood stars that in an extra logic logic mechanism makes them both momentary celebrities. They do not tire of appearing, as in a dresser, exposing their private life with photos, comments and updates, while they search without ceasing in those of “friends”, known and still unknown. With great lightness they reveal or expose intimate aspects of their private life to social networks of Twitter or Facebook, providing intimate data, even photos, being registered in the respective networks. What intimacy? If we ourselves ventilate every second our daily life, as well as that of our relatives and friends, so that the whole of our virtual existence is stored and delivered to third parties; And if we add that dozens of agencies monitor each of our communications, including of course government agencies, it is very clear that our privacy is nothing like that still prevailing in the middle of the twentieth century. The paradox is that since we are never so guarded by power and by others, Particularly the government or any company, has at your disposal so much information about us.
Fauzi Hamdan Amad
Imagen: Sebastiaan ter Burg