Law Enforcement and Libraries in the UK: Privacy, Proportionality & Good Practice

When we examine the implications of US and UK governmental responses to the events of 9/11 for the privacy rights of their citizens, we have to begin from the understanding that even prior to 9/11 there were relatively few congruencies between the two legal systems. While neither country has an explicit constitutional right to privacy, in the US the Supreme Court decided in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) that for many of the other constitutional rights to be meaningful, there had to be at least an implicit right to privacy derivable from the Constitution. In contrast, the concept of a right of personal privacy, to protect the individual from third parties generally, or from government in particular, is one which, until recently, has been largely alien to the law of the United Kingdom. Unlike the situation in the United States, the judiciary in the UK has consistently declined to provide specific sectoral privacy rights, via the common law, that might eventually be developed into a general right of privacy. Legislative attempts to create such a general right have met with an equal lack of enthusiasm. Where specific sectoral statutory protections of privacy have been adopted by the UK Parliament they have, almost without exception, come about as a result of pressures at an international level, not the least as a result of actions, or threats of actions, under the European Convention on Human Rights, or as a result of economic requirements consequent upon the UK's membership of the EU.