Peter A Clarke

The Atlantic is an excellent publication that inhabits the intersection of scholarly publication and current affairs commentary.  Why Does Privacy Matter? One Scholar’s Answer is a typical example of this form of writing.  It addresses some of the core issues why privacy matters.  It is comforting, in a depressing sort of way, to see the US legislative privacy protections lag as badly as that in Australia.

The article provides:

Our privacy is now at risk in unprecedented ways, but Read the rest of this entry »

The ABC, per Mark Corcoran, undertakes the latest detailed analysis of Drones,  This time, in Drones set for large-scale commercial take-off the issue is that the Civil Aviation Authority is about to provide rules to permit the use of drones.

It provides:

Hundreds of small commercially operated drones could soon take to Australian skies under a radical new set of rules proposed by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in Melbourne this week.

Under a new weight class system, prospective drone entrepreneurs with craft weighing 2 kilograms or less could take off after completing nothing more than an online application form.

CASA officials say Read the rest of this entry »

I have been posting on drone technology regularly, in the context of their privacy (not to mention other tortious) implications on members of the public.  The current edition of Time Magazine has undertaken a very extensive article on drones in Drone Home.

It provides:

A few months ago I borrowed a drone from a company called Parrot. Officially the drone is called an AR.Drone 2.0, but for simplicity’s sake, we’re just going to call it the Parrot. The Parrot went on sale last May and retails for about $300.

It’s a quadcopter, meaning it’s a miniature helicopter with four rotors; basically it looks like a giant four-leaf clover designed by Darth Vader. It’s noisy and a bit fussy: it spits error messages at you from a comprehensive menu of them, and it recovers from catastrophes slowly and sulkily. (Pro tip: quadcopters mix poorly with greenery.) But when it’s on its best behavior, the Parrot is a little marvel. You control it with an app on your smart phone, to which it feeds real-time video in return. Mashing the Take Off button causes it to leap up to waist height and hover there, stock still, in the manner of Harry Potter’s broomstick. It’s so firmly autostabilized that on a hot day small children will gather under it to get the cool downwash from its rotors.

It’s a toy, the robotic equivalent of a house pet. But just as cats and dogs are related to tigers and wolves, the Parrot is recognizably genetically related to some very efficient killers.

Flying a drone, even just a Read the rest of this entry »

In Rock stars Tyler, Fleetwood help push celeb privacy bill forward in Hawaii; testify at hearing the Washington Post reports on the progress of a bill in the Hawaii legislature to limit paparazzi from taking photos of civilians (read celebrities) where they have reasonable expectation of privacy. The bill is found here.

The article provides:

HONOLULU — Rock legends Steven Tyler and Mick Fleetwood convinced a Hawaii Senate committee on Friday to approve a bill to protect celebrities or anyone else from intrusive paparazzi.

The state Senate Judiciary Committee approved the so-called Steven Tyler Act after the stars testified at a hearing, saying they want to fiercely protect the little privacy they have as public figures.

The bill would give people Read the rest of this entry »

The use of drones has sped from exclusive military usage to availability by citizens in a matter of a few years.  The cost, size and feasability of technology is now within reach of citizens.  That means they are well within the reach of governments for domestic uses, obviously including as part of a policing approach.  This development has involved precious little policy considerations and little regulation.  In Australia there is no privacy protection relating to the use of drones, notwithstanding the obvious issues.  It is a case of technology fast outpacing the law’s need to regulate in order to protect competing rights and interests.

Charlottesville has reportedly restricted the use of aerial drones (report found here).

It provides:

This week, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia became the first city in the US to limit the use of unmanned aerial drones. Drafted Read the rest of this entry »

 That The Australian has a fear, dread and loathing of any form of a statutory right to privacy is no secret.  The Legal Affairs section  has occasional, bordering on regular, pieces by a range of commentators who run the usual complaints about such a tort.  Today the angle (on page one and five) is an interview with the new Attorney General under the banner Dreyfus sees free speech risk in privacy law (behind the pay wall).  From this exchange the august paper, through its Legal Affairs editor Chris Merritt (a consistent and longstanding critic of a statutory right to privacy), takes some comfort that such a tort may not be in the offing.

 It provides (with some notations):

Incoming attorney-general Mark  Dreyfus has expressed personal concern about the risk to freedom of speech from legislation that encourages people to sue each other for invasions of privacy.

Mr Dreyfus, who is replacing Nicola Roxon as the nation’s first law officer, said countries that had created  a  statutory  method  of suing for privacy had failed to achieve the right balance with freedom of speech. “Legislation in an effective way to protect privacy while at the same time not unduly affecting freedom of speech has proved to be a very difficult task,”

On its face this reportage the Attorney General seems to be less than supportive about a statutory tort of privacy.  It is frustrating that there is no reference as to which jurisdictions which have a statutory “method of suing for privacy” have failed to achieve the right balance with freedom of speech.

Mr Dreyfus said “In jurisdictions where they have had legislation I don’t think they have got the balance exactly right yet.” Mr Dreyfus’s remarks, in an interview with The Australian, provide the second indication within a week that the government could be seeking to address concerns about its approach to free speech.

This of course does not preclude the Government from introducing the statutory right to privacy and claiming it gets the balance right. If he is referring to legislation in continental Europe he is probably correct in his concerns, at least from a common law perspective. The UK does not have a statutory right to privacy but Article 8 and 10 does in effect Read the rest of this entry »

In FTC: Give mobile device users more privacy disclosures — or else the Los Angeles Times reports that the Federal Trade Commission has released guidelines for mobile privacy.  The FTC news release is found here and the guidelines are found here. The Washington Post in FTC speaks up on mobile privacy… covers the same issue.

The article provides:

 SAN FRANCISCO — The Federal Trade Commission called on the fast-growing mobile device marketplace to do a better job of alerting consumers to what the various market players do with their personal information.

It released guidelines for mobile privacy on Friday. The guidelines target Read the rest of this entry »

David Penberthy in Censorious laws treat us all like children is the latest in a long line of members of the Fourth Estate sounding the alarm about a statutory right to privacy.  That perhaps is a tad unfair.  The article deals with a range of other “threats” to the reportage, more real than the illusory danger of a statutory right of privacy.  To wit the consolidation of the anti discrimination Act. Vilification legislation is, and has always been, bad public policy, poorly drafted and unevenly enforced.  It achieves little beyond chilling speech. It does not change malefactors’ views.  It puts the court’s in the invidious of having to assess what is objectionable speech and what is legitimate public debate, what is orthodoxy and whether dissent is appropriately stated.  The legislation should be overhauled at minimum or preferably repealed.

A statutory right to privacy should not chill speech, particularly commentary, if drafted properly.  In any event, notwithstanding the commentary, it does not exist solely in the space of reportage nor is its focus or underlying rationale to limiting what can be covered or how it may be covered.

The article provides (with commentary):

It was one of the most confronting Australian news images of 2012. A little boy holding a placard reading “Behead all those who insult the Prophet”, standing among the hysterical crowd at the Sydney protests against an obscure art-house film ridiculing Mohammed.

The discussion inspired by that image was impassioned. The child and, particularly, his parents were held up as evidence that something was seriously wrong within sections of our multicultural society.

The heated nature of the discussion was not surprising at all, even if some of it was unpleasantly over-the-top. But in a free society such as ours it was still a conversation worth having.

You can understand that the family in question felt distressed. Yet it was their own abysmal actions, in using their kid as the tiny front man for the most sickening political demand, which turned them and their little boy into public figures, and valid subjects for public debate. If they didn’t want to face this kind of distress they should probably have ditched their stupid sign and stayed home and let their son play with his Lego, rather than parade him about in Martin Place demanding beheadings.

I write about this issue not to dredge it up again but to consider how it would have been reported and how it could have been discussed under the changes surrounding media conduct and public conversation being considered by the Gillard Government. From what has been revealed by the Government so far, and from what the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is also believed to have up his sleeve, it is doubtful that a story such as this one could have been reported at all.

On privacy grounds I doubt Mr Penberthy is correct.  Privacy laws in the UK (the closest equivalent in the current debate) do not prohibit coverage of demonstrations including those involving children.  The application of privacy law in the UK relating to children has been specific and limited.

In addition, Read the rest of this entry »