The difference between privacy and "personal data"

It's not what you choose to read, it's where you choose to read it...

Notable from the "privacy" debate around media ethics is the number of times I hear people say, "this information is private" when they actually mean personal.  From judges to MPs, lawyers, celebrities and journalists conflate the two issues.

Privacy is about choice; finding a private space where you're free to act unobserved.  Privacy is critical to personal and social development.

Private spaces are necessary to learn and practice without the threat of humiliation or outside criticism.  Without such spaces our entire lives would be open to outside scrutiny, making life oppressive for all but a lucky outgoing few able to withstand the pressure of constant monitoring.

Private spaces are also incredibly important to the formation of social and family bonds.

"Personal data" is commonly defined in legislation marking out certain classes of information that are deemed to be confidential.  Such classes typically include political views, religion and sexual preference and are specified in laws such as the UK Data Protection Act.


Compatibility and human rights legislation

Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides a right to privacy in respect of our home and family life, as well as our correspondence.

My personal view is that this should be interpreted as a right to build a home or any other space where we are free to act unobserved, however some judges seem to interpret this as any information relating to a subject's family, and other "personal" topics.

Extending this, our social media profiles and other places where we have an online presence could be viewed as extensions of our home and family life when such spaces appear to offer a level of privacy protection - e.g. are not mere "broadcast" platforms like first generation websites were.

The incompatibility with the "personal data" model embodied in data protection legislation comes when people decide to share information which, under data protection legislation, is currently classed as personal or sensitive.

If I create a database of religious, sexual or political preferences that people choose to share in public I am bound by law to afford a great deal of protection to this database.  Such protection is probably not a bad thing as I'm yet to be convinced that the majority of people who choose to share personal data fully understand the implications of sharing; or whether they intended to share the data publicly in the first place.

But the personal data model enshrined in law today leaves two problems:

1. It obliges those who handle personal data to treat it with confidentiality, despite the fact that the data subject might willingly have released the information because they want to make it known
2. It affords no protection to actions not classified as personal, even though the data subject might have chosen to act in what they thought was a private space.  If I want to sit in a closed room and read a book about knitting, the fact I am reading a book about knitting is private to me.  If someone via any underhand means finds out what went on in that closed room and discloses the fact, my privacy has been breached.  

The loss of privacy is the loss of private spaces; places we are free to act unobserved.  The damage caused by a loss of privacy is not the temporary embarrassment caused  by release of the information - the fact I'm interested in the subject of knitting - but the fear that I will no longer be able to find a private space.  The real damage to society is the loss of private spaces, not the publication or release of personal data.