There have been a steady but not overwhelming number of stories in the broadsheet press (including the Australian Financial Review) regarding the impending changes to the Privacy Act.  In the Australian’s New principles offer a point of difference the impact of the changes are again highlighted.  The impact of this fairly muted publicity has been such that within the business community there is only a reported 50% compliance rate at this stage.  That is a concern.  The other concern Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who has been part of a big organisation when it moves to new premises knows how complex and difficult it can be.  Not only does each worker’s files have to be secured and furniture and computer equipment marked but the organisations myriad other stores of documents, records not to mention the more prosaic items from the tea room and the bosses drinks cabinet have to be marked, packed, moved and unpacked in vaguely the right place in the new premises.  Things can go awry when the planning is defective and the execution is sloppy.  As the Compensation Agency Northern Ireland (“CANI”), an administrative unit of the Department of Justice, discovered when it lost control of a mass of sensitive files left in a filing cabinet which it had sold at auction.  Net effect was a £185,000 monetary penalty notice issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office on 14 January 2014 (found here).

FACTS

CANI moved offices from Royston House in February 2012.  It decided to sell  any marketable furniture surplus to requirements at auction [4]. A locked four drawer filing cabinet was then taken out of storage in Royston House, without  its contents being checked,  sent to a shared storage room used by CANI to temporarily store all kinds of office furniture prior to its disposal. It was provided to a local auctioneer for a valuation, again without checking its contents. Apparently the key to the filing cabinet had been mislaid [5]. On 12 March 2012 it was  transported to the local auction and sold to a buyer.  The buyer then forced the lock and discovered that it contained official looking papers dating from the mid 1970’s to 2005.  The Police were called who took possession of the papers and returned them to CANI [6].

The official papers contained

• a limited amount of confidential, ministerial advice; and

• highly sensitive personal data Read the rest of this entry »

Mobile Apps are all too often the weak link in privacy protections.  This has well been well recognised by regulators.  It was the subject of a communique, known as the Warsaw declaration on the “appification” of society. In Track Star Slate reports on iBeacon being used with third party apps to track users.  The beauty of the article is, using a popular app Shopkick, it demonstrates how intrusive the data collection process is and how misleading and, effectively useless, the privacy policies are.  The problems identified in the article regarding privacy policies would probably not be compliant with the Australian Privacy Principles.  In Australia the issue would be that most app developers, especially the start ups, aren’t covered.  They don’t gross more than $3 million per year.  That is a huge problem because Read the rest of this entry »

The Federal Government’s mooted proposal to have some form of watchdog with the power to issue notices or otherwise require a social media site to take down content that was targeted at and likely to cause harm to children as attracted the concern of Tim Wilson.  In Zdnet’s article Australian government plans rapid content removal for social media Tim Wilson reportedly said there were serious risks Read the rest of this entry »

Zdnet reports in Parents want transparency from schools concerning use of student data about a survey where it is clear that parents want reform to the use of their children’s data by schools.

It provides:

 The International Consumer Electronics Show (“CES”) held in Nevada every January, generates plenty of media interest as new gizmos and gadgets are unveiled for the first time.  Some go on to be world beaters while others sink without trace.  Privacy concerns are also a regular fixture of the product launches.  And this year is no different.   The Washington Post in As automakers tap smartphone technology, concerns grow about use of drivers’ data highlights the privacy risks Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of the year.  And with it is my tradition of posting one of the most wonderful editorial’s written to a child about Christmas.  Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus. It always inspires me to write better.  It is beautifully written prose.  What more can you ask of a writer.

The editorial provides:

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The fascinating history of how this wonderful event happened is described below:

Francis P. Church’s editorial, “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” was an immediate sensation, and went on to became one of the most famous editorials ever written. It first appeared in the The New York Sun in 1897 and was reprinted annually until 1949 when the paper went out of business.

Thirty-six years after her letter was printed, Virginia O’Hanlon recalled the events that prompted her letter:

“Quite naturally I believed in Santa Claus, for he had never disappointed me. But when less fortunate little boys and girls said there wasn’t any Santa Claus, I was filled with doubts. I asked my father, and he was a little evasive on the subject.

“It was a habit in our family that whenever any doubts came up as to how to pronounce a word or some question of historical fact was in doubt, we wrote to the Question and Answer column in The Sun. Father would always say, ‘If you see it in the The Sun, it’s so,’ and that settled the matter.

“ ‘Well, I’m just going to write The Sun and find out the real truth,’ I said to father.

“He said, ‘Go ahead, Virginia. I’m sure The Sun will give you the right answer, as it always does.’ ”

And so Virginia sat down and wrote her parents’ favorite newspaper.

Her letter found its way into the hands of a veteran editor, Francis P. Church. Son of a Baptist minister, Church had covered the Civil War for The New York Times and had worked on the The New York Sun for 20 years, more recently as an anonymous editorial writer. Church, a sardonic man, had for his personal motto, “Endeavour to clear your mind of cant.” When controversial subjects had to be tackled on the editorial page, especially those dealing with theology, the assignments were usually given to Church.

Now, he had in his hands a little girl’s letter on a most controversial matter, and he was burdened with the responsibility of answering it.

“Is there a Santa Claus?” the childish scrawl in the letter asked. At once, Church knew that there was no avoiding the question. He must answer, and he must answer truthfully. And so he turned to his desk, and he began his reply which was to become one of the most memorable editorials in newspaper history.

Church married shortly after the editorial appeared. He died in April, 1906, leaving no children.

Virginia O’Hanlon went on to graduate from Hunter College with a Bachelor of Arts degree at age 21. The following year she received her Master’s from Columbia, and in 1912 she began teaching in the New York City school system, later becoming a principal. After 47 years, she retired as an educator. Throughout her life she received a steady stream of mail about her Santa Claus letter, and to each reply she attached an attractive printed copy of the Church editorial. Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas died on May 13, 1971, at the age of 81, in a nursing home in Valatie, N.Y.

For all those who read my posts over the year I wish you all the best for the Festive Season and see you in 2014.  For any passing reader, welcome and all the best.

In the December issue of Atlantic there is a very thoughtful article, in They’re Watching You at Work,  on big data and the impact on the workplace, notably how employees are employed, treated and, unfortunately, fired.  There are also privacy implications in the use of big data and alogorithims.

It provides:

What happens when Big Data meets human resources? The emerging practice of “people analytics” is already transforming how employers hire, fire, and promote.

In 2003, thanks to Michael Lewis and his best seller Moneyball, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, Billy Beane, became a star. The previous year, Beane had turned his back on his scouts and had instead entrusted player-acquisition decisions to mathematical models developed by a young, Harvard-trained statistical wizard on his staff. What happened next has become baseball lore. The A’s, a small-market team with a paltry budget, ripped off the longest winning streak in American League history and rolled up 103 wins for the season. Only the mighty Yankees, who had spent three times as much on player salaries, won as many games. The team’s success, in turn, launched a revolution. In the years that followed, team after team began to use detailed predictive models to assess players’ potential and monetary value, and the early adopters, by and large, gained a measurable competitive edge over their more hidebound peers.

That’s the story as most of us know it. But it is incomplete. What would seem at first glance to be nothing but a memorable tale about baseball may turn out to be the opening chapter of a much larger story about jobs. Predictive statistical analysis, harnessed to big data, appears poised to alter the way millions of people are hired and assessed.

Yes, unavoidably, big data. As a piece of business Read the rest of this entry »

Data breaches in the health sector is an ongoing issue requiring close supervision.  The information, usually of or relating to patients, is almost invariably highly confidential.  And by definition sensitive information under the Privacy Act.  In the UK a former manager of a GP’s Practice has been prosecuted for unlawfully accessing medical records of 1940 patients.

The ICO has Read the rest of this entry »

Geoffrey Robertson has penned an opinion piece on privacy protection in Australia, notably Read the rest of this entry »