The Human Rights Act 1998 has important ramifications for all aspects of police work. Police Investigation, the conduct of prosecution and the presentation of evidence in court, have all conflicted with Human Rights.
In the context of criminal cases the main areas of Human Rights include:
The Human Rights Act 1998 had the effect of incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic law.
This means that the ECHR is now directly enforceable in the UK Courts without claimants having to go to the European Court in Strasbourg. It also means that domestic courts and tribunals must take account of the provisions of the ECHR when reaching decisions. One example of this is the erosion of the traditional right of the unmarried mother to place her child for adoption. Ref: Children The Modern Law by Andrew Bainham.
INTRODUCTION
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differs between cultures and individuals, but shares basic common themes. Privacy is sometimes related to anonymity, the wish to remain unnoticed in the public realm. When something is private to a person, it usually means there is something within them that is considered inherently special or personally sensitive. The degree to which private information is exposed therefore depends on how the public will receive this information, which differs between places and over time.
And in the age of today, right to privacy is the most carefully guarded rights, where vast amounts of personal information is provided, used, traded and even stolen. And thus law of privacy recognitions the individual’s right to be let alone and to have his personal space inviolate. The need for privacy and its recognition as a right is a modern phenomenon. It is the product of an increasingly individualistic society in which the focus has shifted from society to the individual. In early times, the law afforded protection only against physical interference with a person or his property. As civilization progressed, the personal, intellectual and spiritual facets of the human personality gained recognition and the scope of the law expanded to give protection to these needs.
People often think of privacy as some kind of right. But unfortunately, the concept of a ‘right’ is a convoluted way to start analyzing the idea of privacy, because a right is usually equated with a kind of absolute standard. It would be more useful to think about privacy as a facet of an individual’s personality that one would want to harbor exclusively for themselves.
Meaning of Privacy
The term “privacy” has been described as “the rightful claim of the individual to determine the extent to which he wishes to share of himself with others and his control over the time, place and circumstances to communicate with others. It means his right to withdraw or to participate as he sees fit. It also means the individual’s right to control dissemination of information about himself; it is his own personal possession” Another author defines privacy as a ” ‘zero relationship’ between two or more persons in the sense that there is no interaction or communication between them if they so choose” The concept is used to describe not only rights purely in the private domain between individuals but also constitutional rights against the State. The former deals with the extent to which a private citizen (which includes the media and the general public) is entitled to personal information about another individual. The latter is about the extent to which government authorities can intrude into the life of the private citizen to keep a watch over his movements through devices such as telephone-tapping or surveillance. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: human rights