More and more we see countries all over the world adopting new laws and amending their constitutions in order to have a regulatory framework to “protect” their citizens’ privacy and personal data. More than 66 countries (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1946700) have now-a-days emplaced certain regulation that somehow follow the European Directive 95/46/EC, meeting or exceeding the minimum standards of international data protection and privacy agreements. Mexico enacted its Federal Data Protection Law on July 5, 2010, following a constitutional mandate that resulted from an amendment to article 16 of the Mexican constitution, which grants all citizens a constitutional guaranty, a right for the protection of their privacy and persona data.

Just as with the rest of our guaranties embedded in the Mexican constitution, such as freedom of speech, education, health, freedom of religion, among others; the protection of our personal data and privacy is now our constitutional right. The real questions before us are: Can the State really do it? Should they do it? And more importantly: Do we want them to do it? History has shown us that important decisions are really “political decisions” and hence, “political legal frameworks” always tend to benefit one or several elite groups.

Who are the key players that benefit from legally protecting personal data? Who should we protect and from whom? Will privacy laws really protect and benefit the people or the interests of a minority of corporations? Even though we think we share data with friends and family online alone, the problem we encounter is that people are unaware with whom they are really sharing their information and what it is being done with it. People are not sensitive about how relevant and valuable their personal data can be and how such data is an asset that generates extraordinary flows of revenues for corporations. It is also a source of immense power; personal data provides knowledge, predictability, control and allows those who access it, to be able to manipulate individuals and even masses.

Privacy and Freewill.

The technology to monitor, target and affect people directly and in real-time was not omnipresent in the past, so it was more difficult to influence people´s decisions. The most sophisticated advertisements were television ads that targeted millions of “potential” customers. Therefore most of our decisions were made according to our own life experiences and based on recommendations of those around us. Today, the Internet has radically changed this. We are constantly monitored and targeted with products that adapt to our virtual selves. Most people nowadays still think that their decisions and lives are the result of their own choices, their freewill. However, today the average person spends 32 hours a month (http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2011/01/average-time-spent-online-per-u-s-visitor-in-2010/) surfing the web, and is being “legally” monitored by whomever so pleases, and companies are free to analyze his or her virtual behavior. Products, experiences and opportunities are intentionally placed before us, slowly affecting and shaping the natural course of human development, manipulating freewill to benefit private interests. By not being able to maintain our privacy, another fundamental right has been compromised, our freewill. The vast majority of our generation is simply not aware of it.

Just imagine the effects that lack of privacy and hence the manipulation of our freewill, will cause a person born today, who will surely have early access to Internet, maybe as early as at the age of 4. According to reports from non-profit organizations such as Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop, 80% of children between 0 and 5 years old in the United States have weekly access to the internet (http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/). These toddlers are subject to data mining, are being recorded at all times and are being bombarded with private interests. Isn´t it possible that such a person will eventually become who he was indirectly told to be by corporations? When did that person have real choices? Shouldn´t the government comply with the constitutional mandate to really protect our privacy rights? When did the Mexican and the world´s governments, decide to allow companies to monitor and manipulate human behavior? Did they do so consciously or were they also manipulated by the corporations in power?

The power of manipulation.

Could this new human manipulation be a replica of what religion has done for so many years? When people go to church and decide to follow a religion, they assemble into a social community, a network with which they share their lives. People are “told” how to behave, what to do, how to decide between right and wrong. For example, people have historically shared their information with Catholic Priests because they are a “channel to God´s ears”. Did anyone notice what a perfect way of gaining control over a community this tool is? Are the priests really not listening? I wish we could ask the thousands of people who died in the multiple Christian persecutions what they think now about “voluntarily” renouncing to their privacy.

Could Facebook be compared to a religion? Do we think Facebook is not really listening and just functioning as the channel of our communication? If Facebook was compared to any religion, Facebook with 845 million users (http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22 ) would be the 5th largest religion in the world in just 8 years (http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22) after its creation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations)