What does the new Organic Law on the comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom consits of?

What does the new Organic Law on the comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom consits of?

The new Organic Law 10/2022, of 6 September, on the comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom (hereinafter, LOGILS), also known as the “law of only yes is yes”, focusing on those aspects that deal with technology and digital law, was published in the BOE on 7 September. 

Main considerations in the digital field

The main objective of LOGILS is to comprehensively guarantee and protect the right to sexual freedom and to eradicate sexual violence. To this end, it is essential to adopt and put into practice effective, comprehensive and coordinated policies among the competent public administrations in this area, both at state and regional level, in order to guarantee the prevention, awareness and, above all, the criminalisation of these actions.

Thus, given the great influence generated in our society by social networks and the digital environment in general, LOGILS aims to provide a specific response to sexual violence committed in this area, or more specifically, the dissemination of acts of sexual violence through technology, non-consensual pornography, as well as sexual extortion, and this is due to the economic and social power that digital platforms have acquired in recent years.

Importance of raising awareness in education

According to the regulation, the curricula of all non-university educational stages must include instructions on the proper use and handling of the internet and new technologies, and the consequences of their misuse. All of this in order to prevent and raise awareness of sexual violence, guaranteeing the protection of privacy in order to achieve a digital education for citizenship through the attainment of digital competences adapted to each age group. 

Awareness-raising by public administrations

To prevent this type of violence, specifically in the digital sphere, public administrations should promote, among others, the following campaigns:

• Those aimed at raising awareness and actively contributing to the prevention of all forms of sexual violence, of the demand for services linked to sexual exploitation and of pornography that naturalises sexual violence. 
• Those aimed at discouraging the demand for all kinds of services linked to sexual exploitation, prostitution and pornography that naturalises sexual violence.

Other measures aimed at preventing sexual violence in the area of new technologies are also identified, including:

• Agreements with information society service providers established in Spain so that they collaborate in the preparation of plans and measures for prevention and awareness-raising in the digital sphere and promote good practices with regard to the treatment of cases.
• Training media teams so that they are trained to report on sexual violence objectively, without gender stereotypes, with full respect for the dignity of the victims and their right to freedom, honour, privacy, self-image and data protection.

Publicity and personal data protection

Given the capacity of advertising to influence decisions on everything that involves human beings, LOGILS determines that advertisements that present women in a vexatious or discriminatory way, either by using their bodies or parts of their bodies as mere objects unrelated to the product they are trying to promote, or their image associated with stereotyped behaviour that violates the foundations of the Spanish legal system, will be inadmissible. 

With regard to data protection, in procedures related to sexual violence, the protection of the privacy of the victims, especially their personal data, will be pursued. To this end, there will be a limitation of publicity, since the AEPD will exercise the functions and powers that correspond to it to achieve data security when sexual violence occurs through new technologies.

In this sense, the competent court or tribunal may agree, ex officio or at the request of a party, that the hearings be held in camera and that the proceedings be reserved, and the AEPD will ensure the availability of an accessible and secure channel for reporting the existence of illicit content on the Internet that seriously undermines the right to the protection of personal data.