SPECIAL COLLECTION OF THE CASE LAW ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
purpose where the person being observed or recorded has a reasonable expectation of privacy. The
Court concluded that the teacher acted contrary to the reasonable expectations of privacy when he
recorded the students’ breasts, faces and upper bodies with a pen camera while they engaged in
school activities. The Court held that people do have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public
spaces, such as school grounds, and that where a person “does not expect complete privacy [this]
does not mean that she waives all reasonable expectations of privacy” [para. 61]. More info here.
xi. Publications about a public official’s family life
IACtHR: In the case of Fontevecchia and D’amico v. Argentina (2011), the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights considered that a series of publications about the unrecognized son of the
then president of Argentina Carlos Saul Menem with a congresswoman, Menem’s relationship
with the congresswoman, and the relationship between the president with his son, were of public
interest. As a result, the Inter-American Court considered that the subsequent imposition of liability on the editor and director of the paper that published the information did not meet the necessary
requirements and infringed the right to freedom of expression. More info here.
xii. Publications regarding accusations against public officials for sexual offenses
Mexico: In the case Municipal President of Acambaro v. General Director of the Newspaper
“La Antorcha” (2009), the Supreme Court of Mexico reversed a lower court decision that imposed
a criminal conviction against the general director of a newspaper who published an interview that
contained allegations made by a former public official regarding several acts of corruption carried
out by the municipal president. Additionally, the interviewee mentioned a possible act of sexual
harassment, attributable to the municipal president, in the following terms: “one day, at the hotel
in the City of Mexico, he stretched out naked in the bed and ask me to rub his back” [p. 3]. The
municipal president filed a criminal complaint against the newspaper director for the crime of
“attacks on private life,” which concluded with a conviction of three years, one month and fifteen
days of imprisonment for this crime. A determining element of the criminal conviction was that the
press report concerned matters of a sexual nature that the authorities considered were an intangible
part of the complainant’s private life; the ruling was affirmed on appeal. The First Chamber of the
Supreme Court reversed this ruling and declared unconstitutional the law on which the criminal
conviction was founded on. More info here.
xiii. Publication of personal tax data without authorization of its owner
ECtHR: In the case of Satakunnan Markkinapörssi Oy and Satamedia Oy v. Finland (2017),
the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR found no violation of the right to freedom of expression after
Finnish courts and authorities had prohibited two companies from processing personal tax data in
the manner and to the extent that they had. The companies had collected and published information
about the earned and unearned income and taxable net assets of 1.2. million natural persons in Finland, first through a newspaper and later through a text-messaging service by which people could
text someone’s name to a service number and receive that person’s taxation information. In these
circumstances, the Grand Chamber gave a wide margin of appreciation to the domestic authorities
in balancing the right to freedom of expression against the right to respect for private life. The
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