Human Dignity in the Digital Age

The paper explores the connection between human dignity and privacy in the digital age, focusing on how technology’s advancements reshaped the concept of privacy. The discussion focuses on the various concepts of dignity, underlying that the ontological interpretation of dignity is the only one able to ensure its preservation and promotion. Then, the article investigates how the term dignity is used in European and international documents about data protection to see how they interpret it and if they establish a clear correlation with privacy’s rights. The principal aim of this analysis is to argue that human dignity should be the foundational principle for data protection, in order to properly justify it theoretically and in the various legal frameworks.