"Interest in the “right” to privacy has blossomed in recent decades at both the international and domestic levels. At the international level, the right to privacy is expressly recognised in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17 of the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In the past two decades, the legal recognition of privacy has been the subject of major inquiries by the Australian Law Reform Commission and the United Kingdom Home Office. In the United Kingdom, the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998 has prompted a fresh examination of the status of privacy interests in the common law in the context of the legal treatment of privacy in other European member states."