Habeas data

Abstract: This paper is mostly an update on an article that first appeared in the Journal of Information Law and Technology (JILT) regarding the relatively recent legal figure of Habeas Data, which has been implemented in some countries in Latin America. The need to update the original article arose from the fact that there have been many new developments regarding the implementation of this legal tool in Latin America, and because of some other interesting developments in the European Union that required that some of the original conclusions be revisited and amended. This paper was first presented in the 16th Annual Conference of the British and Irish Legal Education and Technology Association (BILETA) in April 2001, my thanks to the attendants for their input, which helped in revising the present work. The paper has many sections that are similar to the original, with the intention of making the update a stand-alone document. A shorter two-part version of the paper appeared in the World Data Protection Report.

Abstract: To cultivate the next twenty years of LatCrit theory, praxis, and community, the afterword looks back to LatCrit’s Critical Global Classroom (2003-04) (CGC), an ABA-accredited summer study-abroad program. The CGC invited U.S. law students to study comparative constitutionalism, law and society, and truth and reconciliation movements while sojourning Chile, Argentina, and South Africa under the question: “Shall the recent history of the Global South become the imminent fate of the Global North?” While enrolled in the 2004 CGC, the author learned about the extraordinary constitutional writ of habeas data, which various Latin American countries adopted as they reconstituted their democracies from the wreckage of the fascist military dictatorships that terrorized their peoples in the second half of the twentieth century.Habeas data enables individuals to petition their government, and certain private entities, to learn what information has been kept on them and for what purposes, as well as to challenge, rectify, and even delete such information. With the recent revelations of the National Security Agency’s massive electronic surveillance of people throughout and beyond the United States, learning about habeas data could constitute a vital intervention for the discourse of U.S.-based legal scholars writing in English, as well as for the community of critical socio-legal scholars who affiliate with LatCrit. To both constituencies, the afterword urges attending carefully to the terrible histories that birthed habeas data, while being cognizant of their continuities with today’s “neoliberal states of insecurity and surveillance,” in order to fashion a strategic alliance capable of grounding habeas data rights within the United States Constitution.

Abstract: The information asymmetry increases the transaction costs. This fact calls the State’s regulation on the contracts developed by the market’s agents in order to get efficient results. In Colombia, the Habeas Data law was created to manage conflicts arising from the asymmetry of information between users and financial entities. However, its ability to solve this market’s imperfection in the banking sector is still limited. In this article, we present results that validate the previous statement based on the analysis of this legal instrument, retaking concepts of the “Law and Economics” and a comprehensive review of Constitutional Court decisions.