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Young Facebook users in Costa Rica enjoy certain protections with regard to keeping their social media activity hidden from parents. That much is granted by Article 25 of the Childhood and Adolescence Code. Such is not the case in Colombia, where the Supreme Court recently issued an opinion that gives parents the right to monitor the Facebook accounts of their children.
In Costa Rica, a legislator would like to take away some of the rights currently enjoyed by minors insofar as online privacy. According to a report by political reporter Sussy Villarreal Nuñez of daily tabloid Diario Extra, Legislator Fabricio Alvarado, Head of the Commission on Childhood of the National Assembly, children in Costa Rica are exposed to certain dangers that could be curtailed by denying them a right to online privacy.
At least two non-profit organizations spoke to Ms. Villarreal about their intention to support an amendment to the law, explaining that parents don’t think much about their children staying up until late at night while fascinated by Facebook. According to Mariela Fonseca of Fundacion Rahab, some parents may think it is all part of growing up in the 21st century, but she thinks that Facebook is fraught with dangers, particularly of the sexual kind, for children.
Here is the full report of the situation in Colombia, courtesy of our international news media partner, Agencia EFE:
Colombian Supreme Court: Parents can keep tabs on kids’ social media lives
Bogota, Aug 4 (EFE).– Colombia’s Supreme Court upheld the right of parents to keep watch on their children’s social media communications on the grounds that, since they have total parental responsibility for the youngsters, “it is a genuine contradiction” to consider this practice a violation of minors’ right to privacy.
According to fragments of the ruling published by media outlets on Monday, “parents exercising their total parental responsibilities are legally and constitutionally authorized to assist, orient and control the communications of their underage children.”
Therefore, “it is a genuine contradiction to say that the activities of observation, orientation and protection of underage children exercised by a mother or a father in the privacy of their home can be illegal.”
The high court’s decision on the matter resulted from the case of an 18-year-old male accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl with whom he was in a relationship and even shared a room after she ran away from her family home.
During the trial of the case, the mother presented her daughter’s e-mails in which the suspected aggressor and the victim shared “intimate details,” to which the accused fired back with the objection that a court order was needed to introduce such evidence, since it had been obtained without the permission of the underage girl.
The high court’s ruling set a legal precedent in Colombia by determining that parents “have the authority to access the communications on technological platforms that their male and female children and adolescents receive and open.”
Therefore, from now on, parents may access their kids’ Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and e-mail accounts without being charged with violating their privacy.
Only in cases where the purpose of this inspection has nothing to do with providing “assistance, accompaniment, orientation, education or protection” will the court view the parental intervention as “violating the privacy of the minor.”
And that, both teenagers and the high court agree, “is illegal and reproachable.” EFE
