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Law Commission makes privacy recommendations
By Steven | February 26, 2010
There’s another report from the Law Commission on privacy: this one the culmination of many of the others.
The report’s not up on the website yet, but it seems that the key recommendations are:
- no change to the tort established in Hosking v Runting.
- creation of a new offence of trespassing on someone’s property to install a surveillance device, to film inside someone’s dwelling without their consent and to install or use a tracking device to track someone without their consent. (The Commission notes the anomaly that police need a warrant to do these things, but you and I don’t.)
- extensions to the Harassment Act to make it clear that keeping someone under surveillance in such a manner as to cause distress comes with the definition of harassment, so can justify a civil restraining order.
Patterns of behaviour involving “watching” and “loitering” are already covered under the Harassment Act, so I’m not sure what that last bit adds. Watching via hidden cameras, maybe? Isn’t that still watching? Hiring someone to follow someone else?
Are you being caused distress if you’re not aware you were filmed until after it’s stopped?
Still, the recommendations seem pretty sensible to me.
The Commission is also to be issuing a preliminary paper on the Privacy Act shortly.
Topics: Privacy Act, Privacy tort | Comments Off on Law Commission makes privacy recommendations