Kim Kardashian v Taylor Swift: privacy on Snapchat and the legal gray areas

From a taped conversation to a naked snap at the gym, technology no longer places reasonable limits on our ability to share private acts - but the law does

When Playboy model Dani Mathers shared a photograph of a naked woman in a gym locker room with her thousands of followers on Snapchat last week, the caption she affixed to the illicit image embodied the promise and threat of the cameraphone era: "If I can't unsee this, then you can't either."

Seeing something once, for a passing moment of time, only to move on and forget, is no longer the standard form of experience. In countries such as the US and the UK where smartphones are already ubiquitous, we are empowered by technology to capture, record, store and disseminate previously unimaginable amounts of audio and visual information about ourselves and the people around us.