Late last year, one of my senior investigating officers came to me with a file she’d been working on for quite a while. She was convinced the facts supported a finding of an “interference with privacy”, that is, a breach of the privacy principles, that had caused harm to the complainant. She’d tried to reach a settlement, but the parties were too far apart.

I’m in Washington DC to talk privacy, or data privacy, or data protection, or however else this growing international preoccupation is described in different jurisdictions, sectors and economies.

It began with a photo shared privately among friends and set in motion events that resulted in a precedent setting award for damages for a privacy breach.

Privacy is important. Privacy is not just about hiding things; it’s fundamentally about having control over who the world thinks you are. Loss of privacy can result in very real harm to individuals, ranging from embarrassment to identity theft.

APEC recently moved one step closer towards the goal of updating its privacy framework in time to mark the 10th anniversary of the framework’s adoption in 2005.

The Internet of Things, drones, dash cams, credit reporting, and care before you share images - it’s been a fast start to privacy in 2015. This is a critical time for those working to protect and promote privacy: human rights defenders, privacy organisations, public sector agencies, the private sector, the technical community and many more.

We can all be paparazzi now but that doesn’t mean we should be. That’s no consolation at all to two office workers who were photographed and filmed having sex in a Christchurch office by nearby bar patrons. 

It can be tedious to check those final details. Sometimes it hardly seems worth the effort. The British Companies House (equivalent to our Companies Office) found out the hard way that it really is worth it. The Companies House is facing an eye-watering damages bill because of wrongly listing Cardiff engineering firm Taylor & Sons Ltd as being in liquidation.