June 12, 2013
The Attorney General’s Department has released a position paper (found here) on the regulations which are being drafted.
The Position paper provides:.
Today the Attorney General issued a press release announcing a referral to the Australia Law Reform Commision on the protection of privacy. More accurately, whether to have a statutory right of privacy.
It provides:
PROTECTING PRIVACY IN THE DIGITAL ERA
The Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus QC has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to conduct an inquiry into the protection of privacy in the digital era.
The inquiry will Read the rest of this entry »
June 10, 2013
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 »
Slate shines, another, spotlight on the collection, exchange and aggregation of data in the United States of America in Who’s Watching You? Not Just the NSA.
It provides:
While you were tweeting an Instagram of your home-cooked tikka masala last night, we learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting data on millions of Verizon customers. The Guardian published the full top-secret court order that forced Verizon to deliver customer information daily to the NSA. In essence, this meant that every time my 3-year-old daughter called to tell me that her imaginary friend Spiral Bunny just recited the alphabet, the NSA probably knew about it. It also knew that I was traveling on a high-speed train somewhere outside of New York City, and that she was sitting at her easel in our home. The fact that I’m actually an AT&T customer doesn’t exclude me from data collection, since my daughter calls me from a Verizon mobile phone.
When I read about the news last night on my various connected devices, I was shocked. But not at the revelation. Rather, I was taken aback that so many people were surprised and enraged by the blanket surveillance.
The reality is Read the rest of this entry »
June 5, 2013
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:
Notions of privacy are bound up in ideas of human uniqueness and the importance of solitude. Privacy engages the individual human mind and reflections on the significance of one’s existence in relation to others, to one’s community and the surrounding world. In that sense, the idea of individual privacy can probably be traced back to ancient times and to early and Biblical reflections upon the human relationship with God and with the world.
Precise notions of what are private tend to vary from Read the rest of this entry »
June 4, 2013
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.
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 »
June 3, 2013
Cynthia Karena, a Fairfax journalist, spoke with me about privacy and data collection just before I left for Massachusetts to present a paper at MIT8. The presentation at the MIT was on the topic of Managing your Identity On Line.
In Data collection a growing threat to our privacy Ms Karena addresses the issue of data aggregation and use of algorithims in tracking individuals on line. She quoted some of our discussion in what was a broad ranging discussion. Some of the issues raised in this article I covered in my presentation in the United States.
The article provides:
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg assures us that users of the ubiquitous social media site are happy with ads tailored to them, but others are less sanguine about the use of Facebook details for commercial use, not to mention the rest of our personal information that’s sloshing around the internet.
Whenever we Read the rest of this entry »
May 31, 2013
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:
May 30, 2013
Tragedies often make for rapid legislative response. And usually dreadful policy.
The Independent reports in New data powers to access email and social media records would stop terrorists, says Philip Hammond that in the wake of the death of Drummer Lee Rigby last week the Government is considering giving police and security powers to access email and social media.
The article provides:
Proposed Read the rest of this entry »