"Mike Ross" wrote in message
news:aaf6241tcgmdt78cc07duq68vij8lf01av@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 8 May 2008 18:00:25 +0100, "The Todal"
> wrote:
>
>
>
>>A family walking down a street to do their shopping have a reasonable
>>expectation of privacy.
>
> Care to clarify? Privacy from what?
What can you mean, privacy from what? If you go to the toilet and someone
opens the door, your privacy has been invaded - regardless of whether or not
your trousers are down. If you are watching television and suddenly realise
that the person on TV whom the film crew have been following as he walks to
the bus stop is you, then your privacy has been invaded. It may or may not
be embarrassing depending on whether you are picking your nose, scratching
your crotch or looking miserable.
There are those who say that we live in a CCTV society and must get used to
the ever-present telescreen watching us. That's arguably true, but in
general those images are seen only by a few people.
I don't see anything private about a public
> street. What law do you think codifies this 'reasonable expectation of
> privacy'
> on a public street?
>
> (free clue regarding privacy: the ?1967? law that decriminalised
> homo.ual acts
> did so only if the acts were conducted 'in private'...)
Seems to be this Human Rights Act of which many people speak. To quote from
their Lordships
This House decided in Wainwright v Home Office [2003] 3 WLR 1137 that there
is no general tort of invasion of privacy. But the right to privacy is in a
general sense one of the values, and sometimes the most important value,
which underlies a number of more specific causes of action, both at common
law and under various statutes. One of these is the equitable action for
breach of confidence, which has long been recognised as capable of being
used to protect privacy.... In recent years, however, there have been two
developments of the law of confidence, typical of the capacity of the common
law to adapt itself to the needs of contemporary life. One has been an
acknowledgement of the artificiality of distinguishing between confidential
information obtained through the violation of a confidential relationship
and similar information obtained in some other way. The second has been the
acceptance, under the influence of human rights instruments such as article
8 of the European Convention, of the privacy of personal information as
something worthy of protection in its own right....The second development
has been rather more subtle. Until the Human Rights Act 1998 came into
force, there was no equivalent in English domestic law of article 8 the
European Convention or the equivalent articles in other international human
rights instruments which guarantee rights of privacy. So the courts of the
United Kingdom did not have to decide what such guarantees meant. Even now
that the equivalent of article 8 has been enacted as part of English law, it
is not directly concerned with the protection of privacy against private
persons or corporations. It is, by virtue of section 6 of the 1998 Act, a
guarantee of privacy only against public authorities. Although the
Convention, as an international instrument, may impose upon the United
Kingdom an obligation to take some steps (whether by statute or otherwise)
to protect rights of privacy against invasion by private individuals, it
does not follow that such an obligation would have any counterpart in
domestic law.
Free clue regarding photographs and privacy: the entire judgment of the
House of Lords in that Naomi Campbell case:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200304/ldjudgmt/jd040506/campbe-1.htm
If you search on the word "privacy" you can find such paragraphs as these:
In my opinion, therefore, the widespread publication of a photograph of
someone which reveals him to be in a situation of humiliation or severe
embarrassment, even if taken in a public place, may be an infringement of
the privacy of his personal information. Likewise, the publication of a
photograph taken by intrusion into a private place (for example, by a long
distance lens) may in itself by such an infringement, even if there is
nothing embarrassing about the picture itself: Hellewell v Chief Constable
of Derbyshire [1985] 1 WLR 804, 807. As Lord Mustill said in R v
Broadcasting Standards Commission, Ex p BBC [2001] QB 885, 900, "An
infringement of privacy is an affront to the personality, which is damaged
both by the violation and by the demonstration that the personal space is
not inviolate."
[snip]
The photographs were taken of Miss Campbell while she was in a public place,
as she was in the street outside the premises where she had been receiving
therapy. The taking of photographs in a public street must, as Randerson J
said in Hosking v Runting [2003] 3 NZLR 385, 415, para 138, be taken to be
one of the ordinary incidents of living in a free community. The real issue
is whether publicising the content of the photographs would be offensive:
Gault and Blanchard JJ in the Court of Appeal (25 March 2004), para 165. A
person who just happens to be in the street when the photograph was taken
and appears in it only incidentally cannot as a general rule object to the
publication of the photograph, for the reasons given by L'Heureux-Dubé and
Bastarache JJ in Aubry v ?ditions Vice-Versa Inc [1998] 1 SCR 591, para 59.
But the situation is different if the public nature of the place where a
photograph is taken was simply used as background for one or more persons
who constitute the true subject of the photograph. The question then arises,
balancing the rights at issue, where the public's right to information can
justify dissemination of a photograph taken without authorisation: Aubry,
para 61. The European Court has recognised that a person who walks down a
public street will inevitably be visible to any member of the public who is
also present and, in the same way, to a security guard viewing the scene
through closed circuit television: PG v JH v United Kingdom, App No.
44787/98, para 57. But, as the court pointed out in the same paragraph,
private life considerations may arise once any systematic or permanent
record comes into existence of such material from the public domain.
Any person in Miss Campbell's position, assuming her to be of ordinary
sensibilities but assuming also that she had been photographed
surreptitiously outside the place where she been receiving therapy for drug
addiction, would have known what they were and would have been distressed on
seeing the photographs. She would have seen their publication, in
conjunction with the article which revealed what she had been doing when she
was photographed and other details about her engagement in the therapy, as a
gross interference with her right to respect for her private life. In my
opinion this additional element in the publication is more than enough to
outweigh the right to freedom of expression which the defendants are
asserting in this case. Despite the weight that must be given to the right
to freedom of expression that the press needs if it is to play its role
effectively, I would hold that there was here an infringement of Miss
Campbell's right to privacy that cannot be justified.
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