Harm to Self-Identity: Reading Goffman to Reassess the Use of Surreptitious Recordings as Evidence

For decades in Canada, surreptitious recordings made by civilians have been admissible in criminal and family trials and labour and employment cases. Courts and tribunals have applied a similar test for admissibility that asks whether a recording is more probative than prejudicial. Recordings are readily seen to be invasive, but the concept of prejudice applied in most cases concerns the fairness and accuracy of what is captured in a recording and not its social or psychological impact on the person affected. This article draws on privacy theory and on Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life to argue that jurisprudence to date has failed to recognize the nature and degree of prejudice surreptitious recordings cause an affected person. A better understanding of this supports a revised test for admission. A recording that captures a private conversation should not be admitted, except in the last resort, which would include where the prosecution has no other means of proving a material fact in issue, where innocence is at stake, or in a civil case where it is necessary to rectify a significant power imbalance affecting credibility.