False Privacy and Information Games

This paper is a critique of false privacy, the proposition that privacy's protective remit should extend to information that is entirely false. It argues that there are conceptual as well as doctrinal problems associated with such an action in tort law. First, drawing on the work of the American sociologist, Erving Goffman, the paper challenges the idea that the authentic self can be recognised in law. Second, the paper argues that false privacy sits uneasily with tort law's doctrinal framework. While the paper focuses on English tort law, it pursues its lines of argument in a comparative context, exploring how German and US law give expression to false privacy.