Personal Privacy

4 Found helpful • 8 Pages • Essays / Projects • Year: Pre-2021

Technological advances have made recording capabilities such as photography easier and readily available through the rise of the internet which are continuously changing the nature and magnitude of threats to privacy around the world. On an international level an individual’s human right to privacy has been acknowledged through the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights stating that ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.’ While Australia is signatory to the convention, there is an absence of common law protection and a lack of wide spread recognition of the need for personal privacy laws in order of balancing competing interests that may be countervailing making the pass on of personal information inevitable. In this regard, international recognition of privacy becomes obsolete in Australia due to a lack of enforceability through common law. However, equivalent actions make it possible for individuals to sue to some extent, for example an action in trespass, confidentiality/confidential information or even protection through the new 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APP’s) of the Privacy Act 1988. Although each one of these related actions are limited and very specific making utility difficult throughout a range of legal matters. Due to the lack of a constitutional right to privacy in Australia, the attempt by the ALRC to implement privacy laws through a new tort of serious invasions of privacy seems justified

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