The National Congress enacted, today (10), in a formal session, the amendment to the Constitution that makes the protection of personal data, including in digital media, a fundamental right. The topic has been pending in Congress since 2019. It originated in the Senate, where it was approved, and went to the Chamber of Deputies for analysis, where it underwent changes and went back to Senate reconsiderationwhich took place at the end of October last year.
The president of Congress, Senator Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), highlighted the adaptation of Brazilian legislation to the new times, of information circulating digitally at a very intense pace. In this scenario, he stressed the need to ensure people’s privacy. “The new constitutional commandment reinforces the freedom of Brazilians, as it comes to be installed in our Constitution to help citizens’ privacy. The data, the personal information, rightfully belongs to the individual and no one else,” he said.
“It is up to him, only he, the individual, to decide to whom this data may be revealed and under what circumstances, except for very well-defined legal exceptions, as is the case of investigations of a criminal nature carried out with due process. cool,” added Pacheco.
Now, data protection is incorporated into the Constitution as an ingrained clause, that is, it cannot be changed. Fundamental rights are considered inherent values of human beings, such as their freedom and dignity. Among the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution are the free expression of thought; freedom of belief; and the inviolability of intimacy, private life, honor and image of people.
The amendment enacted today brings to the constitutional text the principles of General Personal Data Protection Law (LGPD). The LGPD governs the treatment of personal data on any medium, including digital media, carried out by individuals or legal entities, under public or private law, with the aim of guaranteeing the privacy of individuals.
When it passed the Chamber, the deputies included in the text a provision that gives the Union the powers to organize and supervise the protection and processing of personal data, in accordance with the law. The text already provided for the exclusive competence of the Union to legislate on the matter.
“We are defending rights that were once absolute, the right to privacy, to private life. This world of the internet turns against us. Sometimes we are victims of crime, sometimes we are victims of the market”, added Senator Simone Tebet (MDB-MS), rapporteur of the proposal in the Senate, at the time of the first passage of the text by the House.
