All over the world, states tend to increase surveillance, to the detriment of every person’s right to protection of his or her personal data and space, what we commonly call privacy.
On TV and in major newspapers, privacy is mentioned only when politicians try to use it as a scapegoat to justify failures due to laws written based on the emotion of the moment but without thinking clearly about all the repercussions, or when they want to change the rules of the game during the game, jeopardizing the rights of citizens and citizens, thus weakening the concept of the rule of law.
The recurring impatience with the Personal Data Protection Authority is also part of this strategy, which undermines the nominal function of the guarantee bodies, namely to curb both executive power and the economic overpower of those private entities that, increasingly, seem to be the real inspirers and beneficiaries of government policies.
If the independent Authorities are too accommodating to the supervised entities and do not carry out their function properly, citizens have a duty to be vigilant and to denounce their possible omissions; if, however, the Authorities that prove to be determined and independent are subjected to constant media attacks by influencers or political figures, citizens have a duty to publicly stand up for them, especially when the media attacks are followed by actual legislative attacks.
Therefore, we citizens have a duty to take to the streets to defend this function by
- proudly claiming the right to privacy as a human right;
- remembering that everyone’s privacy will always be at risk until its importance is understood by the majority of citizens;
- by demanding information campaigns to explain that knowledge of digital rights is now increasingly necessary to exercise citizenship and full democratic participation;
- by defending privacy from the encroachment of the state, but also from the dangerous, devious and global bullying of information technology and electronics monopolists;
- by demanding that all public services and tools, or those needed to access public services or even those used for institutional communications, be designed to respect privacy;
- affirming that privacy is simultaneously an individual right and a common good;
- demonstrating the full compatibility between privacy on the one hand and public health and fiscal needs on the other.
Privacy is a human right that protects, individually the freedom of the individual and, collectively national security.
Privacy Pride Committee
