Data Protection and Information Privacy in Honduras

Currently, we live in the so-called “Digitalization Era”, in which data protection and privacy of information and communications at a global level are increasingly necessary. According to the Digital 2020 report, which evaluates how people around the world use the internet, smartphones, social networks and electronic commerce, the world population uses the internet for approximately 6 hours and 43 minutes a day, equivalent to 100 days. per year, and that electronic commerce grew, during 2020, what was expected to grow in 10 years, which means that its expansion was exponential.

As established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, in its article 12, “No one shall be the object of arbitrary interference with his private life, his family, his home or his correspondence, nor of attacks on his honor or reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” “For example, Jerry Kang defines privacy as the union of three overlapping sets of ideas: (1) physical space: “the extent to which an individual’s territorial solitude is protected from invasion by unwanted objects or cues” ; (2) choice: “an individual’s ability to make certain important decisions without interference”; (3) flow of personal information: “an individual’s control over the processing – that is, the acquisition, disclosure and use – of personal information” [1] .

This issue is of vital importance, especially of interest to companies that sign labor contracts that include the confidentiality clause of the information known by their workers and the prohibition of disclosing it, as well as contracts for the supply and provision of services in those that include the personal data protection clause that includes those of its employees, the company and/or representatives. This clause seeks to maintain security, administrative, technical and physical measures to protect data against damage, loss, alteration, destruction, use, access or unauthorized treatment.