Peter A Clarke

Today the Victorian Privacy Commissioner has released the latest update of the Guidelines to the Information Privacy Principles in the Information Privacy Act 2000.  The guidelines are found here.

The media release provides:

The Victorian Privacy Commissioner, Helen Versey, today released the third edition of the Guidelines to the Information Privacy Principles in the Victorian Information Privacy Act 2000.

Writing in the introduction, Ms Versey says “Five years has passed since the second edition of the Guidelines was published. Technology has continued to Read the rest of this entry »

In “Where the Bloody Hell Are You?”: Lara Bingle in Search of a Cause of Action the Fortnightly review has used the controversy involving a photograph of Lara Bingle in 2010 in the context of a cause of action in defamation, breach of privacy and misuse of her image.

It provides:

On March 1, 2010, Woman’s Day published a nude picture of Lara Bingle which was allegedly taken in 2006 while she had a “secret” affair with AFL star Brendon Fevola (who was and still is married to Alex Fevola).

The image shows Bingle Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s Age there is a depressingly familiar story about financial and personal records being taken by an employee of Computershare by the simple use of downloading data onto a USB stick.

The person breaching the security was an ex employee of Computershare.  The motives for the action are not clear.  Breach of confidence actions against ex employees who use information belonging to the previous employers to set up in competition is based on  long standing and well established equitable principles.

Where the law faces more challenges in dealing with this type of action is when not only are commercial sensitive documents removed but also masses of personal information.  That is where the privacy of individuals becomes a factor.  Unfortunately the common law and equity has been tentative in dealing with this issue.