Asmens privataus gyvenimo paslaptis ir su ja susijusios problemos baudžiamajame procese

Abstract

In this article the author briefly discusses the concept of privacy and its regulation by Lithuanian legal acts. According to the author, privacy is one of personal secrets, which helps a particular individual to sustain his or her individuality. To have a secret means to survive or to resist in one or another environment or various living conditions. Having a secret means nothing else, but a reaction to the surrounding environment conditioned by biological and social circumstances of an individual. This reason was the one which conditioned the fact that many of countries (including Lithuania) consolidated in their legal acts the right of an individual for private life or the right of privacy, which often is placed on the same footing as such human rights like the right to life and the right to liberty, i.e. the rights which exist irrespective of the will or wishes of State. The right of privacy, which consists of four independent and at the same time inter–related elements (privacy of information; inviolability of person; inviolability of correspondence or any other kind of communication of person; inviolability of premises or territorial inviolability of person), is important to criminal procedure. Criminal procedure is the „legal instrument´ in the hands of State, which might help as to violate privacy of an individual as to protect it. Thus, the criminal procedure might protect the privacy of an individual, first of all, through the procedural guarantees and procedural form; secondly, during preliminary investigation privacy of individual might be protected through another secret, i.e. through the secret of preliminary investigation data, which, in a broad sense, could be considered as a procedural guarantee. However, at present officials, who investigate and adjudicate criminal cases, still fail to fully use all opportunities provided by criminal procedure to limit right of privacy of a person, who has committed a crime or act constituting an offence of right, to that extent, by which he has violated the rights of other members of society, or to protect privacy of other persons, who not being brought to criminal responsibility, yet are concerned with keeping in secret certain information which comprises privacy of that person.