Law lecture on Confidentiality

The three major areas of concern involving confidentiality are:

• State Secrets which mainly affect certain types of investigative journalism and reporting communities which have links to the armed force that is also known as the Official Secrets Act.
• Commercial Secrets which involve solid news reporting, investigative reporting and specialist reporting covering topics such as Health. This is classified as a type of Common Law.
• Privacy involves mainly tabloid and celebrity journalism. In section 8 of the Human Rights Act it states that it is illegal to reveal someone's private life with the public unless consent is given. A good example of this is the Ryan Giggs case where he was accused of having an affair with his brother's wife. Since this allegation wasn't libel he decided to sue based on the fact that his privacy rights were violated.

Therefore the Official Secrets Act was introduced in order to stop spying on certain types of Public Information such as Military information.

People have the right to keep secrets as long as it doesn't go against the Public's best interest. Also a right to pass on these secrets to others with the expectation that they won't pass them on to others.

Confidentiality partly depends on the type of secret information at stake and also partly on the expectation of the person imparting the information that it will be kept secret.
A person is in breach of confidence if the pass on information which:

1) Has the necessary quality of confidence Eg. is important and is not already known, not just 'tittle-tattle'.

2) Was provided in 'circumstances imposing an obligation' Eg. when a reasonable person would think it would be kept secret, such as a Doctor or a Boss etc.

3) There was no permission to pass on the information.

4) Detriment- Likely to be caused to the person who gave in the information. They must show how they'll be hurt Eg. loss of sales and therefore money.

Ordinary Secret Information (both personal, private and commercial) must have:

• Quality of Confidence
• Circumstances
• no permission to reveal
• and cause actual detriment.

Princess Caroline's case was the creation of Defacto Privacy Law. This was started after the paparazzi interrupted a private meal in a restaurant. Princess Caroline had deliberately at at the back of the restaurant in order to prevent drawing attention to themselves, however, the paparazzi still managed to invade their privacy and get their shot. The princess then went to court to report this intrusion which caused the legislation to be passed that stated you can now only justify the publication of pictures of people only if they are engaged in a clear public duty, such as accepting an award. Therefore, there are new dangers for taking 'Wallpaper' type images of identifiable people without permission.