Short Q & A: Privacy

Hello my law professionals and law knowledge seekers. This is short Q & A collection on Privacy law. Privacy is deeply related to data protection.

Image Credit: cipher.com

Q. Does data protection affects all types of privacy?

Ans. Basically data protection is linked with informational privacy but also indirectly has impact on decisional privacy and physical privacy.

Q. How information privacy is a freedom to an individual?

Ans. Informational privacy is often understood as the freedom of individuals ―to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others and this freedom allows for individuals to protect themselves from harm.

Q. What is a key difference between defamation law and privacy law?

Ans. Laws on defamation generally prohibit disclosure of personal information only if it is false. Privacy, on the other hand, would even protect against disclosure of truthful personal information.

Q. What is a subjective harm to an individual?

Ans. A subjective harm is one where an individual has not actually suffered any tangible loss but anticipates such loss after personal information is collected. The uncertainty, anxiety and fear of potential observation are the identified harms in this situation.

Q. What is an objective harm to an individual?

Ans. Objective harms are separately identified when the use of one’s personal information actually results in some damage, whether through loss of reputation or through some other change in the treatment of the individual by society. Data protection must account for both these kinds of harms which arise as a result of unregulated collection and use of personal information.

Q. Which committee initialised the data protection need in United States?

Ans. Advisory Committee in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW Committee) of United States examined the various legal and technological issues raised vis-a-vis increasingly automated processing of data during 1970s.

Q. Name the landmark report of HEW committee of United States?

Ans. Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens: Report of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Automated Personal Data Systems

Q. What are FIPPS?

Ans. The HEW committee’s report suggested Code of Fair Information Practices based on Fair Information Practices Principles (FIPPS). The FIPPS are a set of principles which prescribe how data should be handled, stored and managed to maintain fairness, privacy and security in a rapidly growing global technology environment. FIPPS are now deemed to be the bedrock of modern data protection laws across the world.

Thanks for reading. Please comment the subject on which you want notes. Please share and follow this blog for more law notes.