"The above issues have not been satisfactorily resolved at the conceptual level and it is largely because of this that law-makers have been unable to develop a coherent regulatory framework within which to place the right to privacy. The right to privacy is at present so vague and unstable that its scope seems to be almost boundless. Indeed, there is a tendency to reclassify a number of distinct types of legal wrong as invasions of privacy. For example, violations of one's bodily integrity have traditionally been protected by specific criminal offences or civil actions such as assault, battery and negligence. The justification for such offences or actions was traditionally found in the universally accepted principle that people have a right not to have their bodily integrity violated. However, the same interests that are protected by such offences and actions are being relabeled by some as “bodily privacy”. In relation to information privacy, one commentator has warned that: If we treat privacy as a catch all term and invoke it to rectify every offensive use of personal, or intimate information as an invasion of privacy, privacy will gradually expand to colonise the existing rights of action, such as unfair dismissal, discrimintion, even taxation appeals in appropriate cases. We will end up with remedies: but our capacity to distil the problem will be reduced and our ability to balance our individual claims, either against the needs of our society or against each other will be impaired."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
SJ Gibb, “Is Privacy a Virus?” in H Selby (ed), “Tommorow's Law” (1995), p. 155; as quoted on pp.5-6
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Privacy
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