« Police search warrants against the media | Main | New draft broadcasting code for TV »
Law Commission paper on privacy
By Steven | March 9, 2009
The Law Commission has released yet another paper on privacy. “These are big issues and they are hard,” says Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer. 300 pages big and hard, in fact, building on 2008’s 222-page paper “Privacy: concepts and issues” (discussed here), 2007’s 76-page “A conceptual approach to privacy” by Mark Hickford, and that’s not counting the Commission’s ongoing work on the Privacy Act and public registers. It seems the issues are getting bigger and harder by the year. Methinks the Commission better hurry up and resolve these issues before they become so big and hard that they are intractable.
Here are the key issues, according to the Commission’s press release:
- Is there a value in a tort of invasion of privacy by publicity given to private facts? If so, should it be left to the common law?
- Are any new criminal offences needed to deal with specific types of intrusion?
- Should there be a tort of intrusion into a person’s seclusion? If so, should its development be left to the common law or should it be introduced by statute?
- Should closed circuit television surveillance be regulated?
- Should there be any civil or criminal liability for certain uses of surveillance devices when they are used outside the law enforcement arena?
- Are any reforms to the law needed to deal with voyeurism not involving the use of recording devices, including reform of the “peeping and peering” offence?
- Should the media be subject to any greater or lesser legal restrictions concerning privacy intrusions than other members of the public?
The Commission is seeking feedback by 29 May.
Topics: Privacy tort | Comments Off on Law Commission paper on privacy