CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE SERGIO GARCÍA RAMÍREZ IN RELATION TO THE JUDGMENT OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE CASE OF ESCHER ET AL. V. BRAZIL OF JULY 6, 2009. 1. Issues that are new – for this jurisdiction – are being submitted to the Court so that they can incorporate the wide-ranging list of topics on which it works to the benefit of the rights and freedoms of the inhabitants of the Americas; a constantly evolving case law. Evidently, many questions that are of interest to the situation of the contemporary individual are still pending review and have not yet been submitted to the Court’s consideration in either advisory opinions or litigation. However, new issues that open up spaces for reflection and protection have been added with growing frequency to the traditional offenses that were the starting point for this case law, including some issues that the Inter-American Court examines in the judgment in Escher et al. v. Brazil, to which I am adding this opinion. 2. Together with life, integrity and freedom, the wide-ranging domain of privacy is among the most important rights. This is the region of our existence that the legal human rights system – both the domestic system, described in constitutional provisions, and the international system, consigned in international human rights law – protects from undue interference. This is a space controlled by the individual alone, in which the individual ensures – or trusts – his development, shapes his destiny, cultivates his freedoms. It constitutes a very personal “reserved area” that is only entered by its owner, who preserves and regulates it. This sphere – according to the Court – “is characterized by being exempt from and immune to abusive or arbitrary invasions or aggression by third parties or the public authorities (paragraph 113 of the judgment). 3. In this intimacy – area and shield of protection – many issues of life appear, are analyzed and resolved; protected – always relatively – from outside circumstances and protected from the will of others. In brief, it is the reserved space in which the reflections and decisions, thoughts and feelings, experiences and hopes that will, in due course, influence the conduct and fate of the individual, take refuge. It is where the essential individual resides, alone and free: in front of the mirror in which he looks at himself, removed from examination by others. 4. Evidently, the invasion of the reserved zone confers an immense power on the invader and profoundly affects the autonomy of the person who suffers it. Clearly, it is of interest to preserve and develop all the rights of the increasing status of the individual, but none of them will be sufficient and robust enough, if they are not rooted in the intimacy of the owner of the rights. Hence, the importance of preserving this profound region of the personality with effective guarantees, and hence also the growing temptation, cultivated by authoritarianisms of different types – open or veiled despotism – to breach the frontiers of intimacy, take over the reserved zone, submit it to scrutiny and, based on the knowledge and the invasion, take charge of the fate of the individual. This is the foremost, the most effective and expeditious way to rule the thoughts and the will. The power to know, to intervene, to influence, to decide, without the individual authorizing, wanting or even knowing it, is advancing on the right to be “left in peace” – or left alone, free to ruminate, protected from obligations and demands. Often, the invader works clandestinely. 5. Scientific and technological progress – to which the judgment in the Case of Escher et al. refers – provides instruments of protection, but can also make the individual vulnerable, inasmuch as it provides means or tools for invasion that, a few years ago, we