I grew up in the UK and know that the UK abides by the European Convention for Human Rights which has a clause 8(1) concerning privacy. The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. Article 8(1) of the Convention provides guarantees that such personal matters are kept private unless you explicitly provide consent for them to be released.

The European Union takes this matter pretty seriously - hence the whole do not track and cookie notification policies that you see with European websites these days. I live in Canada now, and here they have two federal privacy laws, the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act - though some provinces are deemed federally exempt because they have their own legislation that is substantially similar in nature to the federal mandates. I guess this "right" isn't accounted for in U.S. law?

Here's article 8 of the convention:

> Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life

> 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

> There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

I am not a lawyer, however I think this refers to personal and family matters. How much you're being paid by your employer is not a personal matter, it's a business matter.

There are many public employees whose salaries are published openly and regularly. If this was a breach of human rights, then it is a breach that the UK government is guilty of on a regular basis.

Ref: http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/005.htm