Privacy, Punishment and Private Law

Abstract

Historically, privacy protection in Anglo-Australian law has been thought of as a subject of private law and (largely) private interests without much reference to ideas about punishment, for a range of policy, legal and practical reasons. However, the reasons seem less convincing in the current environment of radical transparency, extreme speech and seriously harmful conduct affecting not just certain individuals and groups but the public at large. Indeed, there are plenty of ‘privacy’ cases where public interests are prominent alongside private interests, and these are dealt with under private law or under the more public-facing provisions of a data protection regime (or under both together..