Privacy and evidence admissibility
When private individuals violate another person’s privacy, the governing law is not the Bill of Rights but rather the Data Privacy Act, New Civil Code and other pertinent laws
Published in Daily Tribune on June 23, 2022
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News circulated last week that Messenger photos and messages obtained by private individuals are now admissible as evidence and do not violate a person’s right to privacy. Before we start screen-capping conversations or downloading photos sent via Messenger, let us go over the details of the Supreme Court case.
The case is Christian Cadajas v People of the Philippines, G.R. 247348, 16 November 2021. It involves a romantic relationship between an adult and a minor. The mother naturally admonished the couple for their relationship given the age gap, but it was largely ignored.
The mother later discovered that Cadajas coaxed the victim to send him nude photos. Ultimately, these conversations and the photos were used as evidence to prosecute Cadajas for child pornography, but were recovered using Cadajas’ Facebook messenger account.
Expectedly, Cadajas tried to remove these from evidence based on his right to privacy, which the Supreme Court denied.
The following are the lessons we need to remember in this case:
1. Cadajas argued that his right to privacy was violated since the evidence was taken from his Facebook account and as such amounts to a fruit of a poisonous tree (a court procedure device that bars the use of evidence for being illegally obtained).
The Supreme Court disagreed with such an argument and explained that the right to privacy as enshrined in the Constitution (and consequently the exclusionary rule arising therefrom) is intended as protection from government intrusions and not from intrusions by private individuals.
2. When private individuals violate another person’s privacy, the governing law is not the Bill of Rights but rather the Data Privacy Act, New Civil Code and other pertinent laws.
Consequently, there is no exclusionary rule based on evidence obtained in violation of one’s privacy when committed by a private individual. When such evidence is introduced in court, its admissibility is governed by the rules on relevance, materiality, and authentication under the ordinary rules on evidence.
3. The Supreme Court also took the opportunity to discuss the reasonable expectation of privacy test. The test is composed of two criteria: 1) Whether by his conduct, the individual exhibited an expectation of privacy; 2) this expectation is one that society recognizes as reasonable.
Cadajas argued that the evidence was obtained from his Facebook account which was password-protected, and thus, there is an expectation of privacy. However, records show that Cadajas provided the victim access to his account, thus the Supreme Court held that Cadajas cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy from the said Facebook account.
However, it must be noted that the Supreme Court in this case ruled that there is no violation of the right to privacy (for failing to pass the reasonable expectation of privacy test), so it may be misleading to say that obtaining these photos and messages from Messenger does not violate a person’s right to privacy.
In fact, it may be argued that the case did not resolve situations when privacy is at play so to speak. Would the decision be different had there, in fact, been a reasonable expectation, what if these photos and messages were obtained from the account of the victim instead?
However, it is noteworthy that during deliberations of the case, it was mentioned that the Data Privacy Act allows the processing of data and sensitive personal information where it relates to the determination of criminal liability (Section 19) or when necessary for the protection of lawful rights and interests of persons in court proceedings (Section 13), however, it must be analyzed as to who is processing the information which unfortunately was not explored in this case.
Only when the issue is raised again will we get an answer from the Supreme Court. So in the meantime, it is best to err on the side of caution as our legal system has yet to fully explore the limits of our privacy over cyberspace.
