Privacy and Free Expression: Competing or Complementary Rights?

The right to a private life and the right to freedom of expression are not only both fundamental, universal rights; they are also self-evidently important to almost all people in their daily lives – whether through their presence or their absence. They are strongly related rights. If state authorities, or other actors, are monitoring, recording, putting under surveillance, bugging or otherwise intruding into people’s lives, then freedom of expression is compromised. We behave differently when we know that a third party is recording, bugging or monitoring us. Surveillance is intended to intimidate and encourage self-censorship as well as control and inform those doing the monitoring.