Dear friends, good day to you!
The privacy of communications is, according to the Constitution, inviolable. And the protection of personal data constitutes a guaranteed right, with an entire European and national institutional framework having been established for its defense.
On paper, then, we are well protected. In reality, however?
In recent years we learned that leading politicians, top military officers, journalists, and other citizens can become targets of surveillance. We learned about the interceptions by the EYP. We learned about Predator and the capabilities of an illegal surveillance software.
Now, according to yesterday's “Vima”, mobile phone numbers and email addresses of officials, ministers, politicians, military personnel, Maximos staff, and even the prime minister himself, appear on data trading platforms.
Not on the dark Internet. On platforms accessible with a few “clicks,” for money or even for free.
According to established journalistic thinking, a revelation acquires even greater weight when it prompts the intervention of the competent Authorities to investigate any potentially punishable acts. Is there any chance anyone will look into what we read yesterday?
The wiretappings, Predator, and data brokers are not the same cases, nor is there evidence allowing them to be linked to one another. There is, however, one common denominator: the citizen’s privacy and private life, which now seem full of holes.
Never before have there been so many rules for the protection of personal data, and never before have we left behind so much data. On the mobile phone, in email, in applications, in transactions, and in every kind of digital service we use daily.
Technology changed the scope of the problem. The protection of privacy no longer concerns only whether someone listens to and records a telephone conversation. It concerns who collects our data, where they store it, to whom they transfer it, who can buy it, and ultimately what they can do with it.
In short, this is a matter that concerns not only dear Kyriakos Mitsotakis but all of us. Because if the personal data even of people who, due to their position, one would expect to enjoy enhanced protection can be located so easily, it is obvious how exposed the ordinary citizen is, and equally unclear who ultimately protects him.
We have institutions and then some. The ADAE is constitutionally guaranteed precisely for the protection of the privacy of communications. The Data Protection Authority supervises the implementation of personal data legislation. There are the Justice system, the National Cybersecurity Authority, and the competent state services. But are they doing their job?
Because in practice the web of protection created by the State seems to fall short of a reality that is evolving much faster than it. It is equally obvious, moreover, that an after-the-fact reaction is not enough.
The protection of personal data cannot begin each time a publication reveals that they have already been leaked, traded, or used. The responsibility of the competent institutions is primarily preventive: to identify the gaps before others exploit them and to intervene before the damage becomes irreversible.
The Data Protection Authority itself, according to “Vima,” is already examining a recent complaint regarding the activities of a specific platform. It points out, in fact, that when it concerns persons in sensitive public or institutional positions, issues of cybersecurity and possibly national security arise.
Privacy is not protected because the Constitution guarantees it or because the GDPR exists. It is protected when someone checks who is violating it, stops the violation, and imposes the consequences.
Otherwise, the right remains on paper and our data become leaflets.