Committee: Economic and Social Council Issue: Privacy rights in light of NSA files released by Edward Snowden Country:

Kingdom of Spain According to the report that Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee and the former NSA contactor, leaked numerous classified documents of NSA about the surveillance over communications of citizens in US and even allied countries which Spain was involved in, Spain has warned US of a potential breakdown in trust if NSA continues the action. As the reports pointed out that NSA monitored more than 60 million phone calls in Spain in the space of one month, Madrid government summoned the US ambassador to Spain to demand an explanation of the extent of US spying. Following the meeting between the US ambassador James Costos and Spanish government ministers, the foreign ministry released a statement, saying that Spain has expressed to the United States the importance of preserving the trust between two allies, and what NSA did about surveillance has already been thought inappropriate and unacceptable. Spain considers privacy as the crucial part of the citizens rights; however, NSA could have broken Spains privacy laws, which prohibit the conservation of data related to electronic communications. In this series of international events, the balance between personal privacy rights and the national security is the most important and the most critical issue that should be debated. Being the country within the EU with the highest rate of complaints related to data protection, Spain takes it as a serious matter. Article 18.4 of the Spanish constitution of 1978 says: The law will limit the use of information technology in order to guarantee honor, personal and family intimacy of citizens and all their rights. Spain has established a number of explicit organic laws dealing with personal data protection. Also, Spain is the country with the most severe fines about this kind of problems. As for the national security, if it is necessary to collect personal data, the collector has the obligation to inform the individual explicitly beforehand. Thus, the personal privacy rights would never be the right to be forgotten in this digital age and could be fulfilled anytime, everywhere.