Developments in the Law Surrounding an Action for Breach of Confidence

The common law jurisdiction in the UK did not hold the rights of an individual 's privacy highly against the public interest of free expression. UK had a tragic lesson learnt with the death of Princess Diana from chasing paparazzi and in 1998 the United Kingdom passed its Human Rights Act which included a right to privacy. Yet many Judges decisions still use the words of breach of confidence.

The interpretation of “privacy” under the PCC Code was considered in R (Ford) v Press Complaints Commission . The applicant was the well known television journalist, Anna Ford. She looked for authorization to apply for judicial review of the PCC choice dismissing her protest about distribution of photos of her and her accomplice on a disengaged yet open shoreline abroad. Silber J refused permission on the basis of the “broad discretion” given to media regulators and the “extended deference given by the courts” to their

Lord Justice Glidewell said,” It is well known that in English law there is no right to privacy, and accordingly there is no right of action for breach of a person's privacy. The facts of the present case are a graphic illustration of the desirability of Parliament considering whether and in what circumstances statutory provision can be made to protect the privacy of individuals’’ . This shows the English Common Law has no tort of privacy; the reason being is it has limited protection in the doctrine of breach of confidence.

The makers of our conferred as against the Government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of privacy has received increasing legal attention and has grown in legal complexity. Although the word privacy does not appear in the Constitution, its defenders base its credence on the first eight amendments and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantee due process of law and protection against unreasonable intrusion (Christians 95).

Furthermore, the data in inquiry was "sensitive personal data" for the reason that it pertained to the health of Campbell. As a consequence, it was concluded by the court that except that Daily Mirror could make the most of the freedom in the Data Protection Act given to the publication of press, the scholarly as well as arty data in section 32, there had been an infringement of the Data Protection Act for which Ms Campbell go to be compensated (Cozens, 2002). The decision is a milestone as it ascertains that anybody in the public eye, may it be by means of preference or else unintentionally has a right of protection for his or her personal life. Thus, the case purposefully proves to be one more step in the proposition to set up a privacy law in the UK. However, one another implication of this case decision, that did not have a jury hearing, was on the subject of whether or not the fair right of privacy allows the celebrities to maneuver their public impression to their own benefit as this would bring about “celebrities particularly rushing off and obtaining injunctions as soon as they get any sort of whiff of a story about their private life that they don't want the public to know” (CNN, 2002). This claim is also very much

It is understood that there are a number of definitions of privacy. Intellectuals have published works with varying content throughout the years. In 1890, Warren and Brandeis’ article gathered that privacy is the “right to be let alone” (Samuel Warren). Additionally, William Parent suggested that “privacy is the condition of not having undocumented personal knowledge about one possessed by others” (Moore, Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations). On the other hand, Julie Inness illustrated that privacy is “the state of possessing control over a realm of intimate decisions, which include decisions about intimate access, intimate information and intimate actions” (Moore, Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations). Although the definitions vary, the observations and publications regarding privacy indicate that individuals have the right to privacy, along with its protection. More importantly, how do we decide what these privacy rights entail and what principles should be incorporated under its protection? The understanding of one’s privacy and what should be protected is rooted in a society’s moral and social norms. What a culture does out of habit or custom and what their environment was like at the time, eventually shape how they view privacy as well as the laws they create. First, norms and habits undergo certain changes through the political, social,

In cases where a person is threatening to publish content for revenge, Giller v Procopets serves as authority that an application to a Court of competent jurisdiction could be made on an interlocutory basis to immediately restrain such publication based on an equitable breach of confidence.   Subsequently after their break up the defendant tried to share the footage of the plaintiff to the plaintiff’s friends, family and work colleagues. When the plaintiff heard of this she sued the defendant alleging a breach of privacy, breach of confidence and intentional infliction of mental harm. This case was significant because it followed domestic precedent for recovering damages for non-economic loss resulting from a breach of

Throughout history we have fought for many things, freedom, justice, nobility, and today we fight one of the biggest battles yet, we are fighting for our right to privacy. We as a public click away a number of liberties that we have never realised were there to be taken away, with the popularisation of the internet and social media we willingly allow more and more of our individual freedoms to be taken away. As technology evolves we must heed the warnings today in order to avoid an orwellian tomorrow

There is no doubt that out of all history, privacy is at its most vulnerable condition at the present time. Ironically, to secure the whole, individual safety is becoming harmed. The government and businesses are infringing individual privacy in order to protect their society. In effect, balancing between privacy and security has continuously been one of twenty-first century’s biggest controversial issues and everyone has their own views about where to value more. Throughout the essay, using various sources, I will be covering how privacy is becoming threatened, how people have been reacting to this matter, and introduce detailed opinions towards this topic.

I will start this essay by determining what is the right to privacy and what it aims to protect. A right to privacy refers to the concept that one’s personal information is protected from the public. U.S. Justice Brandeis referred to privacy as the “right to be left alone”. If a person wants to be left alone, then they expect the government or the community they live in not to ask them to answer for the choices they make about what information they share or what information they want to be held secret. State and federal laws may limit an individual’s ability to make a decision regarding privacy, but there is typically a balance between an individual’s right to privacy and the government’s interference. A main reason privacy matters is it can limit the government’s power or limit the power of another individual to ask or report information about another individual. In essence, the more someone else knows about us; the more power they

Privacy is an important aspect of one’s personality. It is based on the theory that everyone has the inviolability of the person. The concept of Privacy as a right has been studied for decades and many different definitions of privacy have been proposed by different scholars across various jurisdictions. Also, sociologists as well as psychologists agree that a person has a fundamental need for privacy. Most discussions about this extremely intricate subject take as their preliminary point the phrase ‘the right to be left alone’ coined by Cooley and adopted by Warren and Brandeis in a seminal Harvard Law Review article which has been held as providing the basis for the birth and

Several areas of the law of torts and equity, for example breach of confidence, defamation, breach of copyright can be used to defend the right to privacy. The court in Kaye v Robertson [1991] FSR 62 stated that in the absence of the right to privacy in the English law, the plaintiffs could base their claims in another well-established right of action. The concept of breach of confidence was instrumental in increasing the protection of privacy. It is the closest action to an action for the invasion of privacy as in relation to the disclosure of personal information.

A conundrum arises when balancing the contradicting rights. The UK has a reputation for protecting individuals privacy, as seen in Douglas v Hello. On the contrary, there is also an ‘extraordinary protection’ afforded to freedom of expression in the UK, especially to the Press.

In today’s day and age where lines between the public life and private life have become increasingly blurred, right to privacy has gained importance and new dimensions.

The age old challenge of balancing the individuals’ right to privacy against the public interest in freedom of expression has resulted in conditions which have forced the hand of the judiciary. They are faced with the choice of recognising the tort of privacy or simply expanding the exisitng torts to cover the same ground. While the English courts have never created a true privacy tort, New Zealand has recently taken the step of accepting privacy as a free-standing tort in it’s own right.