Are Narco-Lists Covered by the Philippine Law on Privacy?: Exploring the Limits of the ‘Classic’ Right to Privacy and Applying a Constitutionally Grounded Data Protection Right

This article dissects the limits of the constitutionally recognized right to privacy and examines the constitutional underpinnings of the right to data protection, specifically applying the analysis in the context of narco-lists: ‘intelligence reports’, issued by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s office, that contain names of public officials allegedly involved in the narcotics trade. Whether individuals named in the narco-lists would be successful in asserting the right to privacy against the release of the narco-lists is uncertain, because of their decreased expectation of privacy, their status as public figures, and the countervailing rights to be balanced. This article further conceptualizes the data protection right as a constitutional right: this right may be asserted by individuals named in the narco-lists; with this right, individuals should be able to either require the government to comply with its ex-ante protections or exercise their rights to reasonable access, to rectification, to erasure or blocking, and to damages. Privacy, Data Protection, Data Privacy, Narco-lists, Philippines Drug War