Civil Liability Arising from Misuse of Private Information in Iranian and British Law

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

2 Department of Private law, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Allameh Tabataba’I University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Private information of individuals is always exposed to attack by different individuals. Therefore, while providing a criterion for identifying the concept of private information, by strengthening the guarantee of the enforcement of the violation of the rights of individuals to their private information, a way should be found to prevent the violation of information privacy. The main question is whether the civil liability resulting from the violation of privacy is recognized in British and Iranian law or not? If the answer is positive, how is this supported? In English law, there was no independent form of civil liability claim arising from a breach of informational privacy and due to the formality of the British civil liability system, a lawsuit that directly protects privacy was not acceptable until after Campbell's lawsuit was filed in 2004, the grounds for accepting an independent civil liability lawsuit known as misuse of private information was provided. Also, in the Judicial procedure of this country, the standard of reasonable expectation of privacy (objective standard) has been used to determine whether information is private. In Iranian law, privacy violation is in any form, regardless of whether it is in a specific format. If there are conditions of civil liability, in this case, the defendant is responsible. Of course, the appearance of the Executive Regulations of the Law on Publishing and Free Access to Information only uses the phrase "expectation of privacy" without the condition of "reasonableness" in recognizing the existence of privacy, and this issue apparently confirms that a subjective standard is accepted in Iranian law. However, considering the advantages of the objective standard, this appearance should be ignored and the objective standard should be recognized in Iranian law. Anyway, the mission of this article is to analyze the standard of reasonable expectation of privacy in an analytical-descriptive way and with a comparative view, while examining the conditions of creating civil liability due to misuse of private information.

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References

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Comparative Law Review
Volume 14, Issue 2
Autumn $ Winter 2023-2024
January 2024
Pages 1023-1048

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