Does the prime minister have the right to dance? – THE COUNTRY

The disclosure of images of Sanna Marin at a private party has generated a wave of criticism on social networks with the consequence that she has voluntarily submitted to a drug test. In the past, the media have frequently published news about the private lives of rulers. Today, the Internet significantly modulates the impact of this type of news. Private life can yield to the presence of elements that have sufficient public relevance and serve to contribute to the formation of a free public opinion. However, the public status of a person not only does not imply a waiver of this right, but also reaches the protection of it in the public space. The Constitutional Court (Álvarez Cascos case) considered illegitimate interference the disclosure of images of a public figure, taken in private moments and in a public place without her consent. The notoriety derived from political activity does not deprive the right to maintain a reserved area of ​​one’s own life, since it is up to each person to limit the area of ​​personal and family privacy that is reserved. This right is essential for the development of personality, and its protection extends beyond the family circle, including social relationships. The evolution of information technologies has caused a profound impact on this scenario. The European Court of Human Rights, in its ruling on the Von Hannover case, underlined the risks arising from the use of new information and communication technologies, applying Resolution 1165 (1998) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the right to private life. This integrates in article 8 of the 1950 Convention the fundamental right to data protection, relevant to the case at hand. The General Data Protection Regulation, as Directive 95/46/EC did, enables Member States to reconcile data protection with the right to information and freedom of expression through legal regulations. A good example of this are the ethical rules relating to data processing in the exercise of the journalistic profession in Annex I to the Italian Legislative Code on data protection. These rules define limits such as respect for the inviolability of the home, the protection of the best interests of the minor, the limitation of the processing of special categories of data and the guarantee of the dignity of the person, particularly in the event of illness. According to the rules, the disclosure of aspects of private life must be essential due to the originality of the event, the description of how it occurred and the characteristics of the protagonists. However, the privacy of people who exercise public functions must be respected if the news or data is not related to their function or to public life. The Italian data protection authority had to rule on the photos of Silvio Berlusconi’s parties at Villa Certosa. He ordered the precautionary and, later, definitive blockade of its dissemination in 2007 and 2009. In the guarantor’s opinion, these were images related to strictly personal conduct collected through intrusion techniques within the places of private residence, without the knowledge of the people affected and, in any case, without their consent. In the case of the prime minister, we are witnessing a phenomenon whose risks we should evaluate. In essence, a recording of a politician dancing on vacation is broadcast and the information is used through an orchestrated campaign to question her ability as a ruler. The reference in the audio of the recording to the “flour gang” is enough to infer that she was consuming cocaine. Although it would be very important for a public official of this entity to be an addict, based on a simple inference, a government is questioned to the point of voluntarily submitting to a drug test. And this raises certainly disturbing hypotheses. The discussion about the public relevance of images admits all kinds of arguments. It could be stated, to the extreme, that there is a social interest in knowing how a ruler amuses herself. This humanizes her, brings her closer to the population and allows a judgment to be made about her personality. However, it cannot be ignored that the images were obtained at a private party and shared on a closed social network account. However, what is relevant is its instrumental use in a context of digitization. Today we are all exposed to thousands of impacts. Some may respond to cyberwar actions and force senior officials to adopt preventive behavior. Others, such as neuro-emotional analysis tools, profiling, tracking and constant indexing could be applied to political actors (Cambridge Analytica). In a massive data scenario, the analytics of language or images offer a space for the formulation of predictive models on conduct in politics and its social perception. How would the health of democracy be affected by a scenario of permanent and systematic scrutiny of the private lives of political figures that offered a predictive model of their decision-making or evaluated their health or emotional state in real time? for assuming infocracy (in the definition of Byung-Chul Han), a model in which the public debate of programs and the processes of public discussion of government decisions are replaced by overexposure in social networks and by emotional management and immediate political But this way of doing things creates risks. Transparency moves from the Government to the ruler and the debate moves from politics to the person. The dark space offered by private life disappears completely. There is no time to recharge the batteries, the political character must control every millisecond of her life and that of her environment. He knows he is exposed to constant scrutiny that goes back to the beginning of her career and even before. Anyone can record and broadcast images, including the circle of trust. A phrase in a chat, an email, a tweet that seemed deleted… Everything can be reused in the world of the toxicity of social networks, of the conformation of massive and fictitious debates between bots, of public discussions based on fake news. This completely changes the way we have understood democracy and public debate. It intoxicates criticism, transfers the public debate from politics to the person. It transmutes the essence of the ad hominem fallacy from a discursive technique to the very object of the debate, from means to end. The debate about what is public becomes a permanent tabloid talk show. And this state of affairs creates substantial risks. Depriving people who exercise government functions of their private spaces is insane. Judging them by their private life leads us as a society to be governed from a judgment strongly conditioned by the emotional manipulation of social networks. Ricard Martínez Martínez is a professor of Constitutional Law, director of the Chair of Privacy and Digital Transformation Microsoft-Universitat de Valencia and collaborator of Public Agenda.50% discountSubscribe to continue readingRead without limits