Today the Senate referred the Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill 2013 to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee today (the Committee’s  home page is found here).

The Committee is due to report next Monday, 24 June 2013.  Submissions to the Committee close at midday on 20 June 2013.

The Committee’s inquiry page (found here)  provides:

Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill 2013

Information about the Inquiry

On 18 June 2013 the Senate referred the Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill 2013 for inquiry and report.

The bill seeks to amend the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) to introduce mandatory data breach notification provisions for Commonwealth government agencies and certain private sector organisations.

Submissions should be received by 20 June 2013. The reporting date is 24 June 2013.

The Committee is seeking Read the rest of this entry »

The Attorney General gave a wide ranging speech at the Privacy Reform and Compliance Forum in Sydney today.

Absent greetings and formalities it provides:

It is very timely that we are having detailed discussions about privacy reform and compliance in Australia. It is a very exciting time for privacy policy in Australia.

 We are fast approaching the commencement of the Government’s new privacy reforms in March 2014.

 And I hope we will also have a new mandatory data breach notification scheme commencing next year. As many of you would know, the bill passed the House of Representatives last week and is now ready for consideration by the Senate.

 It is important that we Read the rest of this entry »

The Attorney General’s Department has released a position paper (found here) on the regulations which are being drafted.

The Position paper provides:.

Table 1—Regulation-making powers relating to Read the rest of this entry »

The growing controversy in the United States about data mining is again on the front page of the news.  In How the U.S. Uses Technology to Mine More Data More Quickly the New York Times provides a very useful background on how data is mined.

It provides:

WASHINGTON — When American analysts hunting terrorists sought new ways to comb through the troves of phone records, e-mails and other data piling up as digital communications exploded over the past decade, they turned to Silicon Valley computer experts who had developed complex equations to thwart Russian mobsters intent on credit card fraud.

Today, a revolution in software technology that Read the rest of this entry »

The Hon Micheal Kirby, former High Court Justice, in a recent article, Privacy: An Elusive and Changing Concept, in the Griffith Journal of Law and Human Dignity, and the Hon Justice Peter Applegarth, in a speech in May 2012, Privacy and the media, have provided valuable contributions to a discussion of privacy as a legal construct and its future development, if any, in Australian jurisprudence.

The Kirby article provides a very comprehensive historical background and the influence of overseas developments in the area.  It provides, absent citations:

Daniel Solove is one of leading privacy academics, at Georgetown University,  in the United States.  He is also a prolific author; including Nothing to Hide,  Understanding Privacy and The future of reputation.

In Employers and Schools that Demand Account Passwords and the Future of Cloud Privacy he raises the not unknown phenomana of prospective and actual employers demanding social media passwords so they may access employess/applicants’ social media pages.

The response Read the rest of this entry »

In this post I have undertaken a general review of the Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill 2013 and each of its provisions.  The Bill’s homepage is found here.

SECOND READING SPEECH

In any review it is useful to set out the second reading speech of the Minister responsible for the legislation.  In this case that is the Attorney General, Mark Dreyfuss.

It provides:

The introduction of the Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill 2013 is the next key step in the government’s major reform of Australia’s privacy laws.

It is a long overdue measure that was recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2008.

It will introduce a new consumer privacy protection for Australians that will keep their personal information more secure in the digital age. It will also encourage agencies and private sector organisations to improve their data security practices.

In its 2008 privacy report, the Australian Law Reform Commission found that, as government agencies and large companies collected more and more personal information online, there was an increasing risk that this could become subject to data breaches. There were studies to show that the frequency of data breaches was increasing and their consequences were becoming more severe.

This trend has continued Read the rest of this entry »

The Victorian Law Reform Committee inquiry into Sexting has produced a 252 report.  It is found here.

The focus in the media has been on the recommendation to reform the law so as not to target those who were not intended to be the target of prosecutions, such as young teenageers.  The Committee recommended a range of defences to avoid the unintended consequences of how the law currently operates.  In its deliberations the Committee looked at the broader issues involved.  One of those issues was privacy.  Not surprisingly the press coverage has glossed over this part of the report.

Chapter 7 of the Report reviews the privacy protections in place in Victoria (and Australia).  The Committee endorsed the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s recommendation to introduce a statutory right of privacy.  It relevantly stated:

The Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill 2013 was introduced into Parliament and read a second time today.  The homepage for the legislation is found here.  The Bill is found here (in PDF format).  The Explanatory Memorandum is found here.

The Second Reading Speech was moved.

Hot on the heels of the Attorney General’s announcement that a mandatory breach notification bill will be introduced into Parliament tomorrow the  Privacy Commissioner has issued a press released titled  Australians better protected with mandatory data breach notification.

It provides

The Australian Privacy Commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, has welcomed the mandatory data breach notification laws announced by the Attorney-General the Hon Mark Dreyfus QC MP today. The proposed laws, to commence on 12 March 2014, require notification of serious data breaches that will result in a real risk of serious harm.

‘I have supported Read the rest of this entry »