ABSTRACT
Intelligence Services Act 1994, Pt 3 of the Police Act 1997, the RIPA 2000 and Pts 3 and 11 of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
A fairly demanding essay question, which requires familiarity with the law of confidence. The statement made in the title should be questioned as follows. First, does confidence provide adequate protection for personal information? Secondly, assuming that it does, is it better, in terms of preserving media freedom, to protect such information through the doctrine of confidence or through a new tort? Essentially, the following points should be considered:
• development of doctrine of confidence – relationship between the parties may be informal;
• obligation of confidentiality may be imposed on third parties; • the public interest defence; • ambit of the proposed tort; • comparison between the proposed tort and breach of confidence: impact
on media freedom; • Arts 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and
the impact of the HRA 1998.
