ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the concepts of confidentiality at common law and how the notion of a possible tort of privacy has developed since the coming into force of the Human Rights Act 1998 in the UK. It focuses on the difference between injunctions, super injunctions and anonymity orders and how the courts have made use of ‘double gagging’ orders to restrain publication in the media in order to grant certain celebrities complete anonymity with a view to keeping confidential information, such as an illicit affair, from the public eye. The chapter examines the Google Spain, NT1 and NT2 cases and how the ‘right to be forgotten’ has entered domestic laws of the EU Member States by individuals asking search engines such a Google to ‘delink’ and ‘delist’ their names from their common algorithms. It discusses the wide-ranging repercussions of these rulings and whether there actually still exists complete privacy in the internet age.
