Peter A Clarke

According to digitallife today (amongst others) the iphone is being used to track people.  The article provides:

Your iPhone has a hidden feature: It tracks and records your location constantly whether you want it to or not. What? You wish it wouldn’t do that without your knowledge or consent? Too bad, because there’s not much you can do about the tracking feature right now.

Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, a pair of security researchers, recently discovered that iPhones — as well as 3G-enabled iPads — running iOS 4 constantly record and store their users’ locations in unencrypted files. These files are basically very long lists of latitude-longitude coordinates and timestamps, and they can be found on the devices themselves as well as within the software backups saved on users’ computers.

Needless to say this has animated privacy advocates in cyberspace.

It is hardly controversial to say the Australian press are deeply suspicious on a statutory or common law right to privacy.  Journalists regard the defamation laws, even as amended, as unduly onerous.  A privacy right overlay is generally regarded as an unnecessary intrusion into a press’ ability to report and investigate.

The Australian has taken a line against any statutory right to privacy.  The Fairfax press has not been so determined.  It is interesting then that Richard Ackland in the SMH last Friday argued against a statutory right to privacy while today in the Australian Norman Lucas argues for the development of a right to privacy.  Neither is a particularly penetrating piece.  That is perhaps understandable because it is hard to give justice to a complicated issue in 600 – 1000 words.

Ackland’s piece is an interesting summary of the phone hacking scandal in the UK and the litigation that has ensued.  He takes a swing at Justice Eady for reasons which are not made clear.  Probably because Eady pushed the right to privacy action along with the Mosley decision.  He does refer to Giller v Procopets which he described thus:

In December 2008 the Victorian Court of Appeal said in a case called Giller v Procopets that the plaintiff was entitled to compensation for breach of confidence as a result of her former partner showing a video of their sexual liaisons to her friends, family and employer.

Among other things, the court granted damages for mental distress, which was a big legal leap.

While the grant of damages for mental distress was significant it is hardly the big leap he describes.  To set the bar so high as to require psychological damage would be to have any claim for privacy still born.

He concludes Read the rest of this entry »