Last night the Civil Dispute Resolution Bill passed the Senate and therefore passed both houses of the Parliament.  The Bill’s homepage is found here.

The Attorney General issued a press release which provides:

Attorney-General Robert McClelland today welcomed the passage of the Civil Dispute Resolution Bill 2010 through Parliament, which will encourages people to take genuine steps to resolve disputes before going to court.

“While most parties already attempt to resolve their disputes before litigating, it’s clear there are still some very costly and time consuming cases where this basic step has not occurred,” Mr McClelland said.

“The Civil Dispute Resolution Bill will Read the rest of this entry »

In Europe the regulators are taking a much stronger line on the potential or actual breaches of privacy protections by the large operators in cyberspace.  Notwithstanding the French regulator, the French National Commission for Information Technologies and Civil Liberties (CNiL) telling Google last May that it had to stop collecting details of users’ Wi-Fi networks and content that passed over them  Google has failed to meet those demands.

The camera-carrying cars used to take the pictures that make up Google’s Street View mapping service collected information on the location of Wi-Fi network and some information passing over networks, including usernames, passwords and entire emails.

Though the collection of that information has stopped, the CNiL has said that Google’s collection of information from smartphone users involves the same kind of privacy violations.

“[Google] has not refrained from using the data identifying access points of Wi-Fi individuals without their knowledge,” said a CNiL statement in French, in a machine translation. “This collection now … operates directly through the mobile users connecting to geolocation service Latitutde … without their knowledge.”

“The CNiL considers that this lack of information [to users] is an unfair collection under the law, which was already at work with ‘Google cars’,” it said.

The CNiL said that Google had refused requests from it to report on the issue to it despite two requests to do so.

“As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted WiFi networks,” said Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer. “As soon as we realised what had happened, we stopped collecting all WiFi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities. Deleting the data has always been our priority.”

Yesterday John McMillan, the Australian Information Commissioner, gave a wide ranging speech to the AGS National Information Law Conference.  It is a very interesting and useful read.

Some of the key issues on the privacy front was his comments about the number of complaints:

It is a vibrant area of activity, Read the rest of this entry »

In Pihiga Pty Ltd v Roche the respondents applied for injunctive relief restraining the applicants from introducing as evidence documents brought into existence for a previously held mediation and any oral exchanges during the mediation (see [5] for the specific orders sought).  In his very comprehensive decision Lander J considered the scope of “without prejudice ” communications and the operation of section 131(1) of the Evidence Act.

FACTS

The relief sought by the applicants in the proceeding is to set aside a settlement deed executed by the parties on 25 October 2009. The applicants allege that the respondents breached  section 1325 of the Corporations Act, section 87 of the Trade Practices Act and sections 72 and 85 of the Fair Trading Act in that they misled the applicants during a two day mediation.  The  alleged misrepresentation resulted in the applicants executing a settlement deed. Prior to the mediation  position papers were prepared and presented.  The nature of the misrepresentations included a claim that valuations contained in documents were false.

DECISION

Without prejudice communications

The bases of the respondents’ application for injunctive relief were:

• the common law without prejudice privilege; and
• the mediation agreement  which provided that communications would be conducted on a without prejudice basis [75]

Lander J undertook a very detailed analysis of the operation of the “without prejudice” rule ([80] – [111]) noting:

• the protection afforded Read the rest of this entry »

The Federal Parliament has passed the Evidence Amendment (Journalist’s Privilege) Bill 2010.  It ostensibly is designed to protect journalists’ sources.

The Attorney General’s press release provides:

The new laws will strengthen provisions Read the rest of this entry »

In the recent decision of Messade v Baires Contracting Pty Ltd (Rulings Nos 2,3 & 4) [2011] VSC 75 Justice Forrest made rulings arising out of an error ofcounselcounsel and the highly unusual circumstance of jurors finding themselves in the vicinity of a party outside the court during a trial .

FACTS

The first issue was the failure of counsel for the defendant to put findings/conclusions contained in the defendant’s psychiatric report to the psychiatrist engaged by the plaintiff  so as to compyl with the rule in Brown v Dunn.  Upon  realising her error counsel made application to recall the defendant’s expert. This application was resisted by the plaintiff.  The plaintiffs expert witness was most reluctant to attend again.

The second issue was whether it was appropriate in all the circumstances to discharge a jury because of inadvertent contact between three jurors and the plaintiff during the course of a trial.  There was no suggestion that the plaintiff sought out the jurors or had a conversation with them. The contact, on two occasions,was confined to the three juror finding themselves in the vicinity of the plaintiff while all were waiting for a train at Flagstaff Station. The jurors volunteered this information to the Judge’s associate out of an abundance of caution. An enquiry was made by his honour in the presence of counsel for both parties.

RULINGS

Browne v Dunn

His Honour, at [6], set out the ruling in Brown v Dunn which is always worth recounting:

If you intend to impeach a witness Read the rest of this entry »

That China has little time for privacy on the net is hardly a revelation.  Its contempt for the integrity of search engine is borne out of its obsession to control the flow of content on the net.  Then it is no great surprise to read Google accuses China of interfering with Gmail email system in the Guardian online.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has given the .XXX top-level domain (TLD) its final seal of approval.

The TLD is meant to give pornographic websites a clearly marked home on the Internet, but it has gone through so many ups and downs over the last 11 years that it’s almost a shock that it has finally gone through. Still, the measure didn’t pass without opposition—nine ICANN board members voted in favor of .XXX, while three opposed and four abstained—and the vote went against the recommendation of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee.

The .XXX TLD was initially proposed by ICM Registry in 2000 and resubmitted in 2004, but it faced strong opposition from politicians and conservative groups. After the second .XXX proposal was approved in 2005, the Family Research Council (FRC) launched a campaign arguing that the TLD would allow pornographers to “expand their evil empires on the Internet.” The porn industry opposed the TLD as well, arguing that it would lead to censorship and promote legislation harmful to the industry.

ICANN’s board of directors ultimately rejected .XXX in 2006, concerned that the TLD might make ICANN responsible for enforcing laws and regulations over Internet porn. Read the rest of this entry »

According to EPIC Facebook has indicated in a letter that it will go forward with a proposal to provide users’ addresses and mobile phone numbers to third-party application developers, including anyone who writes games or applications that use the Facebook platform. The developers would be able to ask users for their contact information, and the user would have to give permission by clicking the “allow” button before they accessed the application.

Facebook’s comments came in response to Read the rest of this entry »

The EU is to force Facebook and other social networks to set high standards on default settings and give control over data back to the user.

EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding stated:

“I want to explicitly clarify that people shall have the right – and not only the possibility – to withdraw their consent to data processing,” Reding said. “The burden of proof should be on data controllers – those who process your personal data. They must prove that they need to keep the data, rather than individuals having to prove that collecting their data is not necessary.”

In the Guardian article Reding’s spokesman, Matthew Newman is quotated as saying:

“A year ago she issued Facebook a warning because the privacy settings changed for the worse and now she’s legislating to put flesh on those bones.”

Facebook profiles have been accessible by default since January last year. Users have to opt in to ensure that their photographs and other information can be viewed only by friends.

Newman said companies “can’t think they’re exempt just because Read the rest of this entry »