How to complain in a case where you believe that your privacy has been violated?
There are several remedies available to you if you believe that your right to private life has been violated. Depending on the type and severity of intrusion into your privacy, you can choose to:
- sue the author or publisher of the information in civil court
- go to the police to initiate criminal proceedings
If you believe that information about your private life has been made public for no good reason, you can bring a civil claim against the disseminator of this information. In civil court you can ask for monetary compensation, and/or the publication of a press release announcing the condemnation of the person responsible for the violation. You can also request the judge to prescribe urgent measures to prevent and/or stop the violation of your private life, for example asking the media to delete the publication or prohibit the publication of a book. If the situation is extremely urgent, you can also initiate a special legal proceeding called “référé d’heure à heure”, by which the judge can prohibit within 48 hours the dissemination of an image or illegal content on the internet.
You can take into account both material (for example loss of income) and moral damages when asking for compensation.
In your application to the court you should explain:
- which facts or information about your private life were made public
- how and when they were made public, such as the date, time, the publication and media
- why this violates your rights
- what type of compensation you are seeking, for example, monetary compensation or an urgent measure to end the violation, e.g., asking the media to delete the publication.
- and justify why you are asking for that compensation specifically, for example, the particular sum of money
If you wish to claim compensation because you believe your privacy has been violated by a publication, you can engage civil proceedings within 5 years after the date of the publication. You will not need to demonstrate the usual conditions of civil liability, (a fault, a damage and a causal link between them) because the fact that your privacy has been violated is sufficient to give rise to your right to compensation.
You can request the police to ask the prosecutor to initiate criminal proceedings about a violation of your privacy in several cases:
- where your correspondence has been intentionally made public
- where your image, words or location has been recorded and made public without your consent
- where images of you of a sexual nature, obtained with your consent, have been shared publicly without your consent (i.e., revenge porn)
- where a montage (i.e., an assembly of images, videos or sound sequences) made with your words or images has been published without your consent and it was not obvious or expressly mentioned that it was a montage
Appeal
If the public prosecutor rejects your request to initiate criminal proceedings and you consider that this decision is not well-founded, you may appeal it to the general prosecutor of the court of appeal. The procedure and time-limits for the appeal must be indicated in the decision. If the general prosecutor approves of your appeal, they can order the public prosecutor to initiate proceedings. You will be informed if he/she considers your appeal unfounded.
Additional civil claim
If the police initiate a criminal case and indict the accused, you may claim compensation from the accused during the criminal proceedings. However, if your claim for monetary compensation is not fully satisfied within criminal proceedings, you may bring a separate civil claim.