- Privacy matters – – and food! - February 4, 2025
It is a running joke that one shouldn’t date a writer because you don’t know what they’ll write about you. But behind that joke is a painful truth: that content creators – not just writers but also photographers and videographers – often take someone’s story and tell it without permission.
For the storyteller, it’s just one among the many that they tell; but for the subject, it’s a life that is being defined – often redefined – without their control.
We know this with pictures, as the best pictures often show emotions: someone’s grief, happiness, or even terror. But if we were the subject, how would we feel to have our most emotional moment recorded not just for the world to see, but for generations yet to come? Do we want that picture and that moment to define us for the rest of our lives?
Yet that is what story tellers – we can them content creators now – often do. They take a moment of our lives and put it out for the world to see. Strangers who have never known our triumps and struggles will look at that picture and judge us based on that one moment in our life.
Is there a law that protects the individual from the intrusion? Or can we take anyone’s life and record it as we please?
The Data Privacy Act of 2012 says that individuals must consent to the processing of their personal and/or sensitive personal information. Photographs are often considered sensitive personal information (SPI), because these often show a person’s race, gender, and state of health, all of which are considered SPIs.
However, the law also says that processing for journalistic and literary purposes is outside its scope. In some advisory opinions, the National Privacy Commission (NPC), which monitors compliance with the law, has said that such exemption only means that media practitioners do not have to justify their processing of personal data, but will still have to protect and secure the data that they process, and to respect data subject rights.
Those taking pictures have often justified by action by pointing out that the picture was taken in a public space. Does that mean that when we go out – even just to shop, or go to the office – we give up our right to privacy? That when we cry in public – even when we cannot stop ourselves from doing so – we are allowing someone to take our picture and record our most intimate moments for the rest of the world to see? Would the photographer still take the picture if the subject was someone dear to him/her?
The law protects individuals, but beyond the provisions of the law, content creators – photographers, videographers and writers alike – must also be compassionate and respectful of their subjects. We must never forget that the stories we tell are actual lives lived, that our subjects may be trapped in the stories we created, long after we have moved on to other stories, and other lives.