On many occasions the terms privacy, intimacy and data protection are confused. It is not strange that they are referred to as synonyms that define the right that we all have to be respected. our personal sphere, let's say in the "spiritual" (we are not talking about physical or mental integrity).
Indeed, the right to privacy, as well as, among others, its “relatives” the right to one's own image, honor, the secrecy of communications and identity are part of the family of the so-called personality rights. This category of fundamental rights, of Italian origin, was already in our pre-constitutional legal system. However, the guarantees they currently offer are due to their constitutional recognition and, fundamentally, their association with the personality and dignity of the person who, during the first years of democracy, consolidated the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court.
Personality rights are autonomous rights, with their own entity and with a different legal regime. Although the confusion is justified. Both for its own content and for the Privacy right unitary in the context of continental and Anglo-Saxon European law, it would not be incorrect to use the term privacy to refer more generically to the scope of protection of these rights. We could say that the right to privacy, in our system, is a dogmatic category covering the management of personality rights.
Okay, but what is privacy?
Without fuss: privacy is the power of every person to decide what aspects of their life they want to share with others.
Privacy is contemplated for the first time in Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, better known as the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted in 1950, as the right to respect for life. private and family, home and correspondence. Accordingly, any interference in these areas of privacy requires justification.
And then what is data protection?
Data protection is the fundamental right that, always requiring compliance with a series of conditions in the processing of personal data, aims to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of all people. It is a concept and a right separate from those of privacy, intimacy, self-image, secrecy of communications, etc. Although it is certainly a right close to all of them since it ensures their protection.
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