Leading experts from common law jurisdictions examine defamation and privacy, two major and interrelated issues for law and media.

Privacy is one of the most important concepts of our time, yet it is also one of the most elusive. As rapidly changing technology makes information increasingly available, scholars, activists, and policymakers have struggled to define privacy, with many conceding that the task is virtually impossible. In this concise and lucid book, Daniel J. Solove offers a comprehensive overview of the difficulties involved in discussions of privacy and ultimately provides a provocative resolution. He argues that no single definition can be workable, but rather that there are multiple forms of privacy, related to one another by family resemblances. His theory bridges cultural differences and addresses historical changes in views on privacy. Drawing on a broad array of interdisciplinary sources, Solove sets forth a framework for understanding privacy that provides clear, practical guidance for engaging with relevant issues. Understanding Privacy will be an essential introduction to long-standing debates and an invaluable resource for crafting laws and policies about surveillance, data mining, identity theft, state involvement in reproductive and marital decisions, and other pressing contemporary matters concerning privacy.

In the 1970s, the Supreme Court handed down Smith v. Maryland and United States v. Miller, two of the most important Fourth Amendment decisions of the 20th century. In these cases, the Court held that people are not entitled to an expectation of privacy in information they voluntarily provide to third parties. This legal proposition, known as the third-party doctrine, permits the government access to, as a matter of Fourth Amendment law, a vast amount of information about individuals, such as the websites they visit; who they have emailed; the phone numbers they dial; and their utility, banking, and education records, just to name a few. Questions have been raised whether this doctrine is still viable in light of the major technological and social changes over the past several decades.

Reproduction of the original: The Right to Privacy by Samuel D. Warren, Louis D. Brandeis

This paper argues that the American "open-fields" doctrine should not be imported into Canada. That doctrine holds that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the area beyond the curtilage surrounding a home and therefore searches of such "open-fields" do not engage constitutional safeguards, such as the warrant requirement. In making the case that the open-fields doctrine should be rejected by Canadian courts, the paper canvasses the differences between American and Canadian constitutional jurisprudence relating to the definition of reasonable privacy expectations under the constitutional guarantees relating to the protection of privacy in both the American Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The paper argues that a key difference is the rejection of a "risk-analysis" approach to the definition of reasonable privacy expectations in Canada. That difference, explains the author, is the principal reason why the open-fields doctrine should find no place in section 8 Charter jurisprudence. The open-fields exception to the warrant requirement is all about misguided and illogical risk-reasoning, which the Supreme Court of Canada has consistently and clearly rejected.