Peter A Clarke

In the last sitting week of the last Parliament the Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill 2013 was awaiting debate and passage by the Senate.  It had been introduced into and passed the House of Representatives with any controversy. It had bi partisan support.  There was bi partisan support in the Senate if some grumbling at the Committee stage (mainly because of the lack of time in considering the Bill).  On track to becoming law.  Then came a certain K Rudd who challenged the incumbent Prime Minister, and won.  The Senate timetable is thrown into confusion and the Bill lies there unloved and unpassed.  When Parliament was prorogued it lapsed.

On 20 March 2014 Senator Singh of Tasmania has introduced the 2014 version of the 2013 Bill. They are identical.  While the Bill is not Read the rest of this entry »

In Pro Publica the author Julia Angwin writes about the privacy intrusive practice of tracking via apps, tablets and smart phones in Privacy Tools: Mask Your Location.  The use of metadata generally and of locational data in particular has, as the article points out, a high probability to identify individuals.

It provides:

“Where R U?” There’s a reason that is among the most common text messages of the modern age.

Big Data as a defined term is something of a portmanteau, something of a catchall term. The MIT technology review picked up on this in The Big Data Conundrum: How to Define It? where it identified 6 definitions of the term being:

1. Gartner. In 2001, a Meta (now Gartner) report noted the increasing size of data, the increasing rate at which it is produced and the increasing range of formats and representations employed. This report predated the term “dig data” but proposed a three-fold definition encompassing the “three Vs”: Volume, Velocity and Variety.This idea has since become popular and sometimes includes a fourth V: veracity, to cover questions of trust and uncertainty.

2. Oracle. Big data is the derivation of value Read the rest of this entry »

In Want to be anonymous? Now you have a right to be the Age reports on Australian Privacy Principle 2, the general right to anonymity and pseudonymity.  It is an important right and one that is not properly understood by many business organisations, as the article makes clear.  As with much of the new regulatory regime it is important for the Privacy Commissioner to put muscle behind the APPs and their accompanying guidelines.

It provides:

Australian citizens now have the right to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym when interacting with government agencies, private health service providers, and large organisations under new privacy laws.

The Australian Privacy Foundation says the laws, which came into effect on March 12, are a huge win for those who don’t wish to use their real identity when interacting with organisations and companies that have a turnover of more than $3 million a year.

The law states individuals “must have the option of dealing anonymously or by pseudonym”.

There are a number of Read the rest of this entry »

The Age has had quite a good track record in covering privacy issues in a reasoned way, such as  its editorial The primacy of internet privacy on 9 March 2014.  It has Read the rest of this entry »

Apps as a bread tend to be sinkholes of data leakage and privacy breaches.  App developers are often not caught by the operations of the Privacy Act and they tend to focus on data collection as a priority over the establishing systems to store and protect the data being collected.  In itnews The 10 apps you need to keep prying eyes away from your mobile messages and data the article focuses on those apps which provide privacy protections.  A very interesting and practical guide.

The article, in slide format, provides:

Wickr is often Read the rest of this entry »

Zdnet’s Playing by the rules: Australia’s banks and the privacy reforms reflects how similarly sized organisations in the same sector approach drafting their respective privacy policies.  Not massive differences but enough to show that in drafting the APPs cana be in the eyes of the beholder.   How the Privacy Commissioner approaches Read the rest of this entry »

The acting Victorian Privacy Commissioner announced the appointment of Helen Lewin as the Deputy Privacy Commissioner (see here).

I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Ms Lewin during a privacy seminar on 22 March 2012.  She chaired the session.  I was presenting on federal reforms, then mooted, to the Privacy Act and recent cases and a possible statutory right to privacy.  She is competent, effective and very pleasant to deal with.  She will be a credit to the office.

The long awaited discussion paper into Invasions of Privacy is to be released on 19 March.  It will be interesting to see what new perspectives it will provide on an issue so comprehensively covered in the ALRC’s 2008 report For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice (ALRC Report 108).  It is likely to recommend a statutory right of privacy, much as every Law Reform Commission has done when reviewing privacy issues in the last 30+ years, but also look at the patchy, inconsistent between jurisdictions, inadequate and sometimes obsolete surveillance legislation that exist at both a state and Commonwealth level.  If the Commonwealth Government baulks at introducing a statutory right of privacy, which will have to be for non legal reasons, it can at least focus on reforming the surveillance regulation which is fast falling into disrepute.

On the surveillance question the Privacy Commissioner has Read the rest of this entry »

In Drones: Sky’s the limit for airborne snoopers the Age does a brief overview of the issues that the burgeoning use of drones raise (pardon the pun).  Not a bad quick overview of the technological issues but nothing I haven’t covered in the last two years of postings on drones (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). A worthwhile contribution.

There is uncertainty of the number of drones are in use in Australia (or America) and who is operating them.  Drones can be Read the rest of this entry »