Article 8
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Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides a right to respect for one's "
private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and " necessary in a democratic society". The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe.


Right

Article 8 is considered to be one of the convention's most open-ended provisions.


Family life

In ''X, Y, and Z v. UK'', the Court recalls that "the notion of 'family life' in Article 8 is not confined solely to families based on marriage and may encompass other de facto relationships. When deciding whether a relationship can be said to amount to 'family life', a number of factors may be relevant, including whether the couples live together, the length of their relationship and whether they have demonstrated their commitment to each other by having children together or by any other means.


Home

In ''Niemietz v Germany'' case the court gave broader meaning to the 'home' notion including professional/business premises such as a lawyer's office.


Private life

For better understanding of perception of "
private life Private Life may refer to: *life in the private sphere The private sphere is the complement or opposite to the public sphere. The private sphere is a certain sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority, unhampered by ...
" case law should be analyzed. In ''Niemietz v. Germany'', the Court held that it "does not consider it possible or necessary to attempt an exhaustive definition of the notion of 'private life'. However, it would be too restrictive to limit the notion to an 'inner circle' in which the individual may live his own personal life as he choose and to exclude therefrom entirely the outside world not encompassed within that circle. Respect for private life must also comprise to a certain degree the right to establish and develop relationship and develop relationship with other human beings."


Case law

Article 8 clearly provides a right to be free of unlawful searches, but the Court has given the protection for "private and family life" that this article provides a broad interpretation, taking for instance that prohibition of private consensual homosexual acts violates this article. This may be compared to the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court, which has also adopted a somewhat broad interpretation of the right to privacy. Furthermore, Article 8 sometimes comprises
positive obligations Positive obligations in human rights law denote a State's obligation to engage in an activity to secure the effective enjoyment of a fundamental right, as opposed to the classical negative obligation to merely abstain from human rights violations. ...
: whereas classical human rights are formulated as prohibiting a State from interfering with rights, and thus ''not'' to do something (e.g. not to separate a family under family life protection), the effective enjoyment of such rights may also include an obligation for the State to become active, and to ''do'' something (e.g. to enforce access for a divorced father to his child). * '' Golder v. United Kingdom'' (1975) 1 EHRR 524 – A prisoner requested a lawyer because he said he wanted to sue a guard for
defamation Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
. Access was denied. This violated the
right to a fair trial A fair trial is a trial which is "conducted fairly, justly, and with procedural regularity by an impartial judge". Various rights associated with a fair trial are explicitly proclaimed in Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, th ...
( Article 6 ECHR) and client confidentiality. * '' Silver v. United Kingdom'' (1981) 3 EHRR 475 – Censorship of a prisoner's correspondence regarding conditions in prison breached Article 8. * '' R v Brown'' 9941 AC 212 – Article 8 was deemed not to " nvalidatea law which forbids violence which is intentionally harmful to body and mind" (specifically, assault occasioning actual bodily harm as part of consensual sadomasochistic sex acts) by the UK House of Lords. * ''Rotaru v. Romania''
000 Triple zero, Triple Zero, Zero Zero Zero, Triple 0, Triple-0, 000, or 0-0-0 may refer to: * 000 (emergency telephone number), the Australian emergency telephone number * "Triple Zero", a song by AFI (band), AFI from ''Shut Your Mouth and Open Your ...
ECHR 192 – Public information that is systematically collected and stored in files held by a state or its agents falls within the scope of private life. * ''
Pretty v. United Kingdom ''Pretty v. United Kingdom'' (2346/02) was a case decided by European Court of Human Rights in 2002. Facts Diane Pretty was suffering from motor neurone disease and was paralysed from the neck down, had little decipherable speech and was fed by ...
'' 002Article 8 extends to protect the right to die. Like with articles 9, 10 and 11, it can be interfered with provided there's valid justification, as there was in ''Pretty''. * ''
Mosley v News Group Newspapers ''Mosley v News Group Newspapers'' 008EWHC 1777 (QB) was an English High Court case in which the former President of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, Max Mosley, challenged the '' News of the World''. The newspaper had exposed his ...
'' [2008
EWHC 1777 (QB)
— Per Eady J, equitable breach of confidence is extended to protect Art. 8 rights. * ''S and Marper v United Kingdom'' [2008] ECHR 1581 – Retention of DNA information in respect of persons arrested but not convicted of an offence was held to breach Article 8. * ''A, B and C v Ireland''
010 010 may refer to: * 10 (number) * 8 (number) in octal numeral notation * Motorola 68010, a microprocessor released by Motorola in 1982 * 010, the telephone area code of Beijing * 010, the Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the R ...
ECHR 2032 – Article 8 does not confer a "right to abortion", but the Republic of Ireland breached it by making it difficult for a woman to establish whether she qualifies for a legal abortion. * ''
Gillan and Quinton v United Kingdom ''Gillan and Quinton v United Kingdom'' was a decision by the European Court of Human Rights that ruled that the United Kingdom's stop and search powers without reasonable suspicion under the Terrorism Act 2000 The Terrorism Act 2000 (c.11) is ...
''
010 010 may refer to: * 10 (number) * 8 (number) in octal numeral notation * Motorola 68010, a microprocessor released by Motorola in 1982 * 010, the telephone area code of Beijing * 010, the Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the R ...
ECHR 28 – Stop and search powers granted to police under ss. 44–47 of the Terrorism Act 2000 were neither sufficiently circumscribed nor subject to adequate legal safeguards against abuse. As such, the Court found the powers not to be "in accordance with the law", in violation of Article 8. * ''
Birmingham City Council v Clue Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
'' (2010) EWCA Civ 460 29/4/2010 – A challenge to the decision to refuse to provide Ms Clue and her family with essential support pending the UK Border Agency's determination of her application for indefinite leave to remain in the UK. In a ground-breaking decision of the Court of Appeal, the judgment extends the scope of community care provision for families subject to immigration control who seek to remain in the UK on Article 8 ECHR grounds. * '' Plantagenet Alliance v Ministry of Justice and others'' (2014) EWHC 1662 – Article 8 did not entitle modern-day descendants of the
House of Plantagenet The House of Plantagenet () was a royal house which originated from the lands of Anjou in France. The family held the English throne from 1154 (with the accession of Henry II at the end of the Anarchy) to 1485, when Richard III died in b ...
to be consulted on the place of re-interment of
Richard III Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Battl ...
. * ''
Zakharov v. Russia ''Zakharov v. Russia'' was a 2015 court case before the European Court of Human Rights involving Roman Zakharov and the Russian Federation. The Court ruled that Russia's legal provisions governing communications surveillance did not provide adeq ...
'' (2015) – The Court examined Russian surveillance legislation ''in abstracto'', finding unanimously that the existence of inadequate legislation and its application in practice themselves amounted to a violation of the applicant's rights under Article 8. * ''The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission's Application''
015 Fifteen or 15 may refer to: *15 (number), the natural number following 14 and preceding 16 *one of the years 15 BC, AD 15, 1915, 2015 Music *Fifteen (band), a punk rock band Albums * ''15'' (Buckcherry album), 2005 * ''15'' (Ani Lorak album ...
NIQB 96 – Northern Ireland's criminalization of abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, rape or incest declared incompatible with Article 8 *''Aycaguer v. France'' (2017) -- ECHR found France's use of biological sampling for criminal DNA databases to be a violation of Article 8 in the case of Jean-Michel Aycaguer, a french national convicted of non-violent crime. Importantly, the court did not find the entire practice to be in violation, but claimed that the seriousness of Aycaguer's crimes did not constitute a situation wherein public interest outweighed his right to privacy in his private life. The notion of private life in the Article 8 is also interpreted as including some duty of environmental protection.


Cases involving LGBT rights

The following cases deal with the applicability of Article 8 to issues related to LGBT people including the recognition of same-sex marriage, laws prohibiting sodomy, and access to health services for transgender people. * ''
Modinos v. Cyprus ''Modinos v. Cyprus'' 16 EHRR 485 (25 March 1993) is a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights concerning Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Case The case was initiated by Alexandros Modinos, a gay rights activist who h ...
'' (1993) – Ruling invalidating Section 171 of the Criminal Code of Cyprus under which male homosexual acts were banned, finding that there had been a breach under Article 8 of the applicant's right to respect for private life. * '' Smith and Grady v United Kingdom'' (1999) 29 EHRR 493 – The investigation into and subsequent discharge of personnel from the Royal Navy on the basis of sexual orientation was a breach of the right to a private life under Article 8. * ''
Van Kück v. Germany A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and bigger than a common car. There is some varying in the scope of the word across ...
'' 003ECHR 285 – Inadequate access to a fair hearing in a case involving reimbursement by a private medical insurer for costs of hormone replacement therapy and gender reassignment surgery by a transsexual woman, where undue burden had been placed upon her to prove the medical necessity of the treatment, was a violation under Article 8 and Article 6 § 1. * '' Oliari and Others v Italy'' (2015) – Italy violated Article 8 by not providing legal recognition to same-sex couples. *''R (Elan-Cane) v Secretary of State for the Home Department''
020 020 is the national dialling code for London in the United Kingdom. All subscriber numbers within the area code consist of eight digits and it has capacity for approaching 100 million telephone numbers. The code is used at 170 telephone exch ...
EWCA Civ 363 – UK courts held that issues of gender engaged Article 8 as gender was central to a person's private life.


Violation of the convention by mass surveillance

Mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...
, such as by the programs revealed in Edward Snowden's global surveillance disclosures, is often accused of violating the 8th article of the European Convention on Human Rights. A 2014 report to the UN General Assembly by the United Nations' top official for counter-terrorism and human rights condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core
privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...
rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions and makes a distinction between " targeted surveillance" – which "depend upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" – and "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites". Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime, including terrorism, is justified, according to a decision by the
European Court of Justice The European Court of Justice (ECJ, french: Cour de Justice européenne), formally just the Court of Justice, is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Un ...
.


See also

*
Article 10 ECHR Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides the right to Freedom of Expression and Information. A fundamental aspect of this right is the freedom to hold opinions and receive and impart information and ideas, even if the receive ...
* '' Entick v Carrington'' * '' Semayne's case''


Notes


External links


A guide to the implementation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights
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PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
)
Guide on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights
(
PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
) {{DEFAULTSORT:Article 8 Of The European Convention On Human Rights 8 Privacy law