Peter A Clarke

The Australian newspaper has long had a set against increased privacy protections.  Its reaction, usually through its commentators, to any proposal that the Federal Government legislate a statutory right to privacy borders on paranoia.   To be fair, its opposition has been consistent, longstanding and been open.  See for example my post in 2012 about Ainslee Van Onselen’s criticism of the Rudd Government’s consideration of a statutory right to privacy in 2012.  It was very much a henny penny “sky – is – falling – sort – of -piece” that is a sub specialty of the Australian on its topics of hate.

It is then more than a little surprising that  Peter Van Onselen (definitely relation of Ainslee, as in spouse) writes a shock horror piece in today’s Australian about political parties being able to use our data without any oversight or regulation in We have no say over what political parties can do with information collected about us in today’s Australian.  The exclusion of political parties (and the media) from the Privacy Act 1988 has been there since Read the rest of this entry »

For those interested in practical privacy and compliance with data security standards the various guides published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (the “NIST”) are particularly useful.  The Australian Privacy Principles are written in the general and the Commissioner’s guidelines are quite anodyne.  The NIST guidelines are best practice.

The latest publication by the NIST, Application Container Security Guide, deals with Read the rest of this entry »