Triangulating Intrusion in Privacy Law

Abstract

Abstract This article concerns two interrelated, persistent problems for privacy law. The first is the failure of academic scholarship to get adequately to grips with the meaning of privacy. The second is the apparent inability of the English judiciary to resolve the common law lacuna in respect of intrusion-type privacy violations. The two problems are related in that the former is a significant contributor to the latter. Mainstream scholarship has long insisted on pursuing the One True Meaning of privacy, thereby overlooking valid alternative conceptualisations and creating a melange of theories that provides little assistance to judges. However, by adopting a novel, triangulation-based approach to understanding privacy of the sort proposed herein, it is possible to locate points of consensus between these rival theories in respect of particular privacy-violating activities. This consensus can provide the certainty common law judges require for the elaboration of further doctrine in this field.