andrewlighten.com

We’re having a bit of a spat with our neighbours at the moment. When we moved in the landowner was a butcher, but he’s since decided he’d rather have a career digging holes in dirt so he’s started a commercial landscaping and earthworks business in a residential backyard. It’s a long running dispute. The council ruled on our side in a letter they sent this week (which we got a copy of).

A day later, the police turn up at our door making inquiries about some photographs I took of trucks moving around their backyard in a manner contrary to what he told the council.

It’s a shame they’re wrong (as were the police) regarding my rights to photograph them.

The Attorneys-General are on my side according to this document they published entitled “Unauthorised Photographs on the Internet and Ancillary Privacy Issues”.

Paragraph 15 says, in part,

In some jurisdictions, there is also a prohibition on the taking of photos of “private activities” in “private places”.  … They do not include activities carried on in any circumstances in which the parties to the activities ought reasonably to expect that they may be observed. …

Digging piles of dirt in an open yard with reversing buzzers alerting the neighbourhood you’re moving trucks around probably fits the definition of “expect that they may be observed”.

Later, in paragraph 34, this text appears:

… for any society to function in a relatively free and open manner there could not realistically be a requirement for all photographs to be taken with consent. If there were such restrictions, candid shots could never be taken, and the media would be severely constrained in the images they show us. Freedom of expression and artistic expression would undoubtedly be adversely affected.

And, in paragraph 62:

There is no absolute right to privacy in Australia. …

Followed closely by this text in paragraph 64:

the Privacy Act will generally not apply to an individual who takes photographs of another person without their consent.

Let’s review: You have no absolute right to privacy, and anything you do in a public place with an expectation that you can be observed can be photographed.