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Over the course of 24 hours earlier this week, I had a 180-degree privacy experience "IRL," as youngsters say.
At one end of the spectrum was my travel with a European airline. Their on-board announcement, aside from the usual security message, asked passengers to be mindful of other passengers' right to image and right to privacy when taking pictures onboard. It was the first time I heard such a message, though other airlines may do it as well.
It was a healthy reminder that awareness of others is important in a personal everyday setting. I know better than to suggest society relies on common sense and decency to protect others' privacy, but they are nonetheless a good guide for human behavior, even if personal sensitivities will lead to a wide range of interpretation of that cautionary note.
At the other end of the spectrum was my experience at a medical center I visited in Brussels. While I was in the waiting room, I could hear the practitioner in her office next door. She was on the phone with a lab technician, asking for a patient's test results.
From that conversation — which took place in an adjacent room, door closed — I was able to learn: the name of that patient, her medical condition and her recent medical history, including very intimate details.
As I walked in the room for my exam, the patient's name was still appearing on the computer monitor. A printed list of all patients with an appointment that day — so mine included — was laying on the desk, with their birthdate and phone number. Anyone in that waiting room with a malicious intent was served an opportunity to do harm on a platter.
Beyond the primary implications, both examples echo the concept of "intimate privacy," which appears in laws in several European jurisdictions — whether harbored in civil law, as in France, or criminal code, like Germany, for example.
In its 2012 Von Hannover v. Germanyjudgment, the European Court of Human Rights explained that "the concept of private life extends to aspects relating to personal identity, such as a person's name, photo, or physical and moral integrity." In the court's view, the development, without outside interference, of an individual's personality in their relations with other human beings should be protected. "There is thus a zone of interaction of a person with others, even in a public context, which may fall within the scope of private life," the court stated.
We are also seeing literature emerge looking at use cases such as intimate privacy harms in menstrual cycle tracking apps or the use of search engines to find suicide helplines.
University of Virginia School of Law professor Danielle Citron beautifully summarized what is at stake: "When we have the ability to figure out who has access to our intimate life, we can enjoy personal integrity, we are in charge, we can enjoy social esteem."
Isabelle Roccia, CIPP/E, is the managing director, Europe, for the IAPP.
This article originally appeared in the Europe Data Protection Digest, a free weekly IAPP newsletter. Subscriptions to this and other IAPP newsletters can be found here.
