⇒ Privacy is an area developed a lot since the Human Rights Act 15 years ago

⇒ No later writers have pleaded the case for a right of privacy and a remedy for its violation more eloquently than Warren and Brandeis

• All the way back in 19th century there have been calls for a right to privacy → Warren and Brandeis said things such as “the press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency” in the Harvard Law Review in 1890
• Similar concerns were felt in the Levesson inquiry recently

⇒ Privacy, as a concept, encompasses a range of aspects of our life: under Article 8 ECHR, the right to a private and family life includes the right to bodily privacy and informational privacy (i.e. have your info disclosed only to people who have a right or reason to know)

• Article 8 has been used to cover issues such as sexuality (Smith and Grady v UK (1999))
• The right to refuse medical treatment (X v Finland (2012)) and
• The right to choose the manner of dying (Pretty v UK [2002])

⇒ Prosser tries to define privacy by saying it is not one tort, but a complex of four

1. Intrusion upon the plaintiff's (claimant's) seclusion or solitude, or into his private affairs → physical privacy
2. Public disclosure of embarrassing private facts about the plaintiff
3. Publicity which places the plaintiff in a false light in the public eye → this seems more like defamation than privacy though
4. Appropriation, for the defendant's advantage, of the plaintiff's name or likeness → this seems more to do with Intellectual Property (IP) then privacy

⇒ One attempt to define privacy: "[T]he right of any person to be protected from intrusion upon himself, his home, his family, his relationships and communications with other, his property and his business affairs..."" (Right of Privacy Bill 1970 (not enacted))

⇒ The Younger Report noted that all the attempts to define privacy “either go very wide, equating the right to privacy with the right to be left alone, or boil down to a catalogue of assorted values” → so they felt it would be no point them defining privacy

⇒ Privacy encompasses interference by the state, through such agencies as the police and security services, benefits agency and other agents; and interference by others, such as private individuals or the media

⇒ The following notes focus on interferences by private individuals and the media.