Secrecy, Confidential Information, and Confidentiality in the Context of Protecting Information about the Private Life of Participants in Criminal Proceedings

   The paper presents the author’s position regarding defining the content and interrelation of the categories «secret», «confidential information», and «confidentiality», and regarding assessing, on that basis, the adequacy of their usage in scholarly literature with respect to protecting information about the private life of participants in criminal proceedings. The views of scholars who treat the notion of «confidential information» as definitive for the concept of «secret» are critically evaluated. The author argues for the partial compatibility of these concepts, since, in the author’s view, not every secret is confidential, nor does every piece of confidential information constitute a secret. It is contended that scholars are mistaken to link the protection of the inviolability of participants’ private life in the criminal process to the institutions of investigative secrecy and the secrecy of judges’ deliberations. The article concludes that, within the institution of attorney-client confidentiality, the term «confidential» encompasses all information received by the defense counsel from their client, and such confidentiality is necessarily connected with the protection of the client’s private life.

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