Ben­da­han Par­lia­men­ta­ry Initia­ti­ve (22.479): Include the right to digi­tal inte­gri­ty in the constitution

Sub­mit­ted text

Artic­le 10 Para­graph 2 of the Fede­ral Con­sti­tu­ti­on shall be amen­ded as follows:
2 Ever­yo­ne has the right to per­so­nal free­dom, in par­ti­cu­lar to phy­si­cal, men­tal and digi­tal inte­gri­ty and to free­dom of movement.

Justi­fi­ca­ti­on

The deve­lo­p­ment of socie­ty, and in par­ti­cu­lar the mass intro­duc­tion of new tech­no­lo­gies, rai­ses new que­sti­ons that were not, or hard­ly, asked at the time our con­sti­tu­ti­on was adopted. The deve­lo­p­ment of the Inter­net, social net­works, Big Data, arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence and the glo­ba­lizati­on and con­cen­tra­ti­on of tech­no­lo­gies crea­te oppor­tu­ni­ties and added value, but also pose new thre­ats to the inte­gri­ty of the population.

Alre­a­dy in 2018, the French-spea­king Asso­cia­ti­on of Data Pro­tec­tion Aut­ho­ri­ties (AFAPDP) under­lined in a reso­lu­ti­on the importance of gua­ran­te­e­ing this right for the pro­tec­tion of per­so­nal data and that it was neces­sa­ry for the popu­la­ti­on to be able to con­trol this data.

The digi­tal inte­gri­ty will be by pro­tec­ting the digi­tal life of the per­son ensu­red. Our digi­tal iden­ti­ty essen­ti­al­ly con­sists of our traces on the Inter­net, espe­ci­al­ly from the data coll­ec­ted in the cour­se of our acti­vi­ties on the Inter­net. It is pri­ma­ri­ly about per­so­nal data and, in par­ti­cu­lar, how that data is lin­ked. The lea­ding play­ers in this field have alre­a­dy taken some steps in this direc­tion, eit­her by regu­la­ti­on or vol­un­t­a­ri­ly, but the right to digi­tal inte­gri­ty is insuf­fi­ci­ent­ly pro­tec­ted today and the­re is no con­sti­tu­tio­nal basis for this right.

The right to con­trol digi­tal iden­ti­ty is the­r­e­fo­re The right to under­stand and know what data of our digi­tal lives is coll­ec­ted, whe­ther that is infor­ma­ti­on that we expli­ci­t­ly share or infor­ma­ti­on that is com­pi­led or cal­cu­la­ted by sites that we visit or by third par­ties based on our acti­vi­ties. So the point is that a Right to access the data is gua­ran­teed, with which any per­son can cla­im the gua­ran­tee of this inspection.

The demand that digi­tal inte­gri­ty be inclu­ded in the con­sti­tu­ti­on is also part of the popu­lar initia­ti­ve of a civil socie­ty group (“Digi­tal Sove­reig­n­ty”). This demand has also been voi­ced in seve­ral can­tons and by peo­p­le of dif­fe­rent poli­ti­cal persuasions.