Privacy – your right – your choice  

More pictures are being published on the website these days and although it might be a little late in the day for some, we should consider the individual’s right to privacy in relation to cwam.org.uk. On doing a bit of digging I found that the Court of Appeal held that the  photograph of a child in a public street taken and published without his parents' consent could breach the child's right to privacy unless there was some justification. (David Murray v Big Pictures (UK) Limited – David Murray is the son of JK Rowling). Although this judgement refers specifically to children, there are so many nuances to the right of privacy and publicity laws that it makes sense to put some procedures in place.

Ignore the legality for a moment and it is arguable that some form of consent is something that should be sought as a matter of courtesy to the CWAM membership, their friends and family who may attend CWAM functions. 

As a first step, this article offers the membership and their families an opportunity to opt out of having their image published on the website. Simply click here, type your name/s in the body of the e mail and send it to me. I will undertake not to use any photographs of you on the webpages. Similarly, if there are any photographs of you on the site at the moment that you believe breach your privacy, tell me where they are and I will remove them. If I don't hear from you, the presumption will be that you have no objections to your picture or your name appearing in the site.  

Finally to put things in perspective, during the 30 days of September, cwam.org.uk had a total of 637 hits from 165 different people (42 of which were looking at the How to Join page). It's not quite in the same league as the BBC website - yet.