Confidentiality law lecture

There are three main areas of concern with confidentiality; these are stare secrets, commercial secrets and privacy. State secrets are covered by the official secrets act, commercial secrets are protected by common law confidentiality and privacy really accounts for secrets within family life. This also brings section 8 of the human rights act into play; this act entitles privacy of normal family life. An example of where Section 8 has been used is with Princess Caroline. Usually the royal family have no right to privacy, but in this reasoning behind this became fairly complicated. The paparazzi had obtained many photographs of Princess Caroline, who took the paper to court over it saying that they were a breach of her privacy. The paper went with the defence that the royal family had no right to privacy; the judge however ruled that they were in fact breaching section 8 because, in the photos it was clear that the Princess didn’t want her photo being taken. Since she wasn’t on official royal business it was a breach of her right to a normal family life. The official secrets act is mainly to protect the country/government/military/whatever from spying. This encompasses everything from government employees having to sign the official secrets act, which if they break will land them in prison, to the prohibition of taking photos outside military bases. This, along with common law confidentiality, works on the assumption that the government have the right to keep secrets as long as it’s not in the public’s interest not knows them.

                Confidentiality partly depends on the type of secret information at stake, and partly on the expectations of the person imparting the information, that it will be kept secret. A person is in breach of confidence if they pass on information which:
A) Has the necessary quality of confidence
AND
B) Was provided in “circumstances imposing and obligation”
AND
C) There was no permission to pass on the information
AND
D) Detriment is likely to be caused to the person who gave the information.

In order to break confidentiality all of these things must be accounted for, whereas in libel cases you must only tend to defame someone.