The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has launched Principles on open public sector information at the Meta 2011 conference in Canberra.

The Principles provide a framework for government information management in Australia, setting out the central values of open public sector information – that it be freely available, easily discoverable, understandable, machine-readable and reusable.  The Principles were developed by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner through a process of public consultation, and draw on considerable work in Australia and overseas into best practice government information management.

The principles are:

Principle 1: Open access to information – Read the rest of this entry »

In three rulings relating to group proceedings issued under Part 4 of the Supreme Court Act Forrest J considered an application to regularise proceedings and an application to dismiss on the basis of an abuse of process in Matthews v SPI Electricity Pty Ltd Ruling Nos 1 and,  Cohen v State of Victoria & Ors (No 2) and in Matthews v SPI Electricity Pty Ltd Ruling Nos 2 an application for summary judgment and to strike out aspects of the statement of claim.

Facts

The claim in Matthews arose out of the Black Saturday bush fires.  The firm Oldham Naidoo (“Naidoo”) issued proceedings in the name of a Mr Keane for damages against SPI amongst others. Naidoo did not have instructions from Mr Keanne to issue the proceedings in his name.  Keane asked Naidoo to remove him as a plaintiff, something that did not happen for another year.  Matthews then replaced Keane as representative plaintiff.  After Maurice Blackburn took over conduct of the proceeding it brought Naidoo’s actions to the attention of the court and applied to regularise the proceedings.  The defendants resisted the application and sought variously to strike out the claim and obtain summary judgment.

In Cohen Naidoo issued a group proceeding in Dr Cohen’s name without his knowledge.  Naidoo sought but failed to find a person to be substituted for Cohen.  There had been a substantial history of amendments to the statement of claim. The court considered the application to strike out the proceeding as an abuse of process.

Ruling nos 1 

Lack of authority in a solicitor issuing a proceeding – does it render it a nullity

In opposing the application to regularise the proceeding SPI submitted Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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 »