How transparency may benefit and harm individual rights. About dreams, myths, paradoxes and cultural reflexes

Transparency is often seen as crucial for protecting human rights, reinforcing individual autonomy and dignity. However, it can benefit the market economy too, potentially harming individual rights. The first part of the research will start exploring the promises of the transparency principle from a public and constitutional law perspective. Next, transparency will be examined in the context of data protection law, where it is seen as an essential tool for ensuring individual control, before moving to an attempt to define the principle. In the second part, I will argue that transparency not only safeguards individual rights but also plays a major role in the economic discourse. By framing transparency as an ideology, I will briefly address individual autonomy, dignity, market economy, and the concept of control. That’s were I will address the distinction between “transparency as dignity” and “transparency as a market tool”, and its consequences, the empowerment of the individual together with surveillance risks. In the third part, I will explore whether transparency is merely an illusion by examining four aspects : the transparency dream, the transparency myth, the transparency paradox, and transparency as a cultural reflex. The conclusion will question whether, as Justice Brandeis famously stated, sunlight is really the best of disinfectants. In the conclusion I will argue that transparency can actually be seen as a transformative concept, imposing public and private actors to structure their data sets in such a way that it benefits the market, under the veil of safeguarding individual rights and dignity.