What is privacy?
Interpreted most broadly, privacy is about the integrity of the individual. It therefore encompasses many aspects of the individual’s social needs.
However, for the purposes of completing a privacy impact assessment (PIA) , it is more useful to examine different aspects of privacy. A PIA could consider:
- the privacy of personal information;
- the privacy of the person;
- the privacy of personal behaviour; and
- the privacy of personal communications.
These four aspects of privacy will obviously overlap and should be seen as working guides to the issues a PIA should explore, rather than strict definitions.
Privacy of personal information is referred to variously as ‘data privacy’ and ‘information privacy’. Individuals generally do not want data about themselves to be automatically available to other individuals and organisations. Even where data is possessed by another party, the individual should be able to exercise a substantial degree of control over that data and its use. The last six decades have seen the application of information technologies in many ways that have had substantial impacts on information privacy.
Privacy of the person, sometimes referred to as ‘bodily privacy’, is concerned with the integrity of the individual’s body. At its broadest, it could be interpreted as extending to freedom from torture and right to medical treatment, but these are more commonly seen as separate human rights rather than as aspects of privacy. Issues that are more readily associated with privacy include body searches, compulsory immunisation, blood transfusion without consent, compulsory provision of samples of body fluids and body tissue, and requirements for submission to biometric measurement.
Privacy of personal behaviour relates to the observation of what individuals do, and includes such issues as optical surveillance and ‘media privacy’. It could relate to matters such as sexual preferences and habits, political or trade union activities and religious practices. But the notion of ‘private space’ is vital to all aspects of behaviour, is relevant in ‘private places’ such as the home and toilet cubicle, and is also relevant in ‘public places’, where casual observation by the few people in the vicinity is very different from systematic observation, the recording or transmission of images and sounds.
Privacy of personal communications could include various means of analysing or recording communications such as mail ‘covers’, the use of directional microphones and ‘bugs’ with or without recording apparatus and telephonic interception and recording. In recent years, concerns have arisen about third party access to email messages. Individuals generally desire the freedom to communicate among themselves, using various media, without routine monitoring of their communications by other persons or organisations.