December 12, 2011
There has been widespread reportage of privacy breaches at the Telstra bigpond site last weekend.
Typical of the reportage is that in the Herald Sun which provides:
The majority of BigPond email users have been reconnected after a privacy breach shut down the system for more than 24 hours.
“BigPond email has Read the rest of this entry »
The Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 will commence on 4 January 2012. It passed through Parliament on 25 November 2011.
The Attorney General’s press release provides:
The new Act will also improve parliamentary scrutiny of legislation for consistency with Australia’s human rights obligations through two measures:
December 5, 2011
Facebook Inc has entered into a consent order regarding its privacy practices and settings. It is found here.
Pursuant to the agreement (which contains the order) Facebook will have to obtain “affirmative express consent” from its users before imposing material changes to their privacy settings.
The order provides:
“[Facebook] shall clearly and prominently disclose to the user, separate and apart from any ‘privacy policy,’ ‘data use policy,’ ‘statement of rights and responsibilities’ page, or other similar document: the categories of nonpublic user information that will be disclosed to such third parties, the identity or specific categories of such third parties, and that such sharing exceeds the restrictions imposed by the privacy setting(s) in effect for the user; and obtain the user’s affirmative express consent.”
Facebook is barred from misrepresenting Read the rest of this entry »
December 2, 2011
In Maietti v Riccardi [2011] VSC 620 Beach J considered the requirements for properly pleading conversations, and where they are in a foreign language, provide proper translations.
The paragraph of hte statement of claim provided:
“On several occasions between August and October 2010, during the course of telephone conversations conducted in the Italian language which the defendant had with Paolo Sepe in the State of Victoria the defendant spoke the following defamatory words of and concerning the plaintiff, namely, words to the effect that the plaintiff:
(a) as treasurer of the Association [Laziali Nel Mondo Victoria Australia] had misappropriated its funds;
(b) as treasurer of the Association had stolen its funds;
(c) as treasurer of the Association, was responsible for the fact that funds were missing from the Association’s bank account;
(d) as treasurer of the Association had falsely claimed that he had spent $500 of the Association’s funds purchasing postage stamps on behalf of the Association.”
His Honour said, at [7], that the settled relevant practice on pleading was:
(a) first, Read the rest of this entry »
The Australian has two pieces regarding privacy;It’s now or never for action on a privacy tort: Kirby and Testing process of silk selection in state of flux.
In It’s now or never for action on a privacy tort: Kirby the article provides:
IF the government does not introduce statutory protections against serious invasions of privacy in the wake of the British phone hacking scandal it will never happen, Michael Kirby has declared.
Mr Kirby, former High Court judge and Australia’s most prominent advocate for strengthened privacy laws, this week urged the Gillard government to Read the rest of this entry »
December 1, 2011
Out – Law.com reports a speech by Lord Justice Jackson where he said the costs implications of incorrect electronic disclosure or inappropriate disclosure orders were potentially “huge”. He was an author of a report on the cost of litigation.
“[Consultants] understand their own software systems, but it is the solicitors and counsel involved who best understand the case… Disclosure is not an activity which can be outsourced in its entirety to external consultants. No existing software programme is capable of achieving standard discovery,” he said.
Electronic disclosure, or e-disclosure, is the process of identifying, preserving, collecting, filtering, reviewing and disclosing electronically stored information. This can include information stored on personal computers, mobile phones and memory sticks; as well as email, documents and calendar files.
In the UK rules electronic disclosure in civil cases were introduced by practice direction to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) in October 2010. In any case where documents relevant to a case are stored electronically, the parties must consider and discuss how disclosure should be carried out at an early stage. All relevant documents must be preserved from the time when court action was first contemplated.
As part of his civil costs review, Jackson recommended Read the rest of this entry »
November 30, 2011
Privacy protection is not about muzzling the media. The right to privacy goes beyond any media intrusion. But the Leveson inquiry has given the starkest and most recent example of how wanton and unbridled invasions of privacy warrant some form of protection with teeth.
In ‘Privacy is for paedos’: The world according to Paul Paul McMullan’s interesting take on the world of journalism and others privacy is freshingly, if somewhat chillingly, clear.
The article provides:
Former News of the World editor stuns UK media inquiry with a breathtakingly frank account of life at a British tabloid.
“Privacy is for paedos,” former News of the World man and tabloid veteran Paul McMullan declared in his evidence at the British Leveson inquiry into the British media.
He had only just observed that “in 21 years of invading people’s privacy I’ve never found anybody doing any good”.
The statements together amounted to a credo for the brutal tabloid newspaper world of which McMullan, former deputy features editor of the now-defunct Sunday tabloid, became the chief spokesman in the otherwise stifled confines of courtroom 73 at the High Court in London.
The public interest added up to no more than the sheer number of copies the News of the World could sell, he said.
“Circulation defines the public interest,” he said, which meant that everything was legitimate as long as the public bought the paper.
“You have to appeal to what the reader wants. I was simply Read the rest of this entry »
Brendan O’Conner has delivered a speech on Privacy at theiappANZ ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2011
The speech reads:
I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and to pay my respects to their elders, both past and present.
I am very pleased to be here this morning to open the 2011 Annual Conference for the Australia and New Zealand International Association of Privacy Professionals.
I spoke at this conference last year, and once again, I can see you have an impressive line up of speakers over the course of the day.
This conference is establishing a reputation for bringing practitioners together to discuss the latest privacy trends and issues.
With that in mind, today I’d like to talk briefly about where we’ve come from, and where we are going.
Information policy landscape
It has been just over 30 years since the OECD Privacy Principles were first developed. Over 20 since the Hawke/Keating Government introduced the Australian Privacy Act, and 10 years since the Privacy Act was extended to cover private sector organisations.
Those of you who have been working in privacy and information law for a great part of those three decades have transformed the way we think about privacy and the protection of personal information.
Technological advances, increased awareness of citizens, the tireless work of non-government organisations dedicated to improvements in privacy protection have changed how we collect, store and use and disclose personal information.
The challenge for government Read the rest of this entry »
In Asociación Nacional de Establecimientos Financieros de Crédito (ASNEF) (C?468/10) & Federación de Comercio Electrónico y Marketing Directo (FECEMD) (C?469/10) v Administración del Estado the ECJ ruled that EU member states cannot generally prohibit organisations’ legitimate and necessary but unauthorised processing of personal data where the information is not stored in specified public sources. National rules that broadly exclude data processing in non-specified public sources in those circumstances are precluded under EU data protection laws.
The Court was ruling in a case involving a dispute Read the rest of this entry »
November 29, 2011
The Australian has gone all out in setting out its views on a possible statutory right of privacy,Unleashing the lawyers is not the answer to the question of privacy, Federal Privacy Commissioner backs conciliation and Lawsuits second-best option for privacy protection.
In Unleashing the lawyers is not the answer to the question of privacy the story provides:
PRIVACY is a fickle thing. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not, sometimes it’s questionable.
True as far as that statement goes. But much in the law falls into that vague catch all nostrum.
There has been no outcry that the privacy of three Pakistani cricketers was invaded when the now defunct News of the World caught them, by secret cameras, in their hotel room stashing bribes.
True but what about the balancing of the freedom of expression rights. More to the point the Pakistani cricketers were exposed and there was no privacy litigation which prevented the story from running.
We accept that investigative journalism can go so far to seek out corruption.
And the right to privacy in America and the law in the UK has permitted investigative journalism. It is not an “either or” question.
But as the parents of murder victim Milly Dowler give evidence to the parliamentary inquiry in London about the impact of the phone hacking for the News of the World, we in Australia are asking ourselves what is the best way for us to outlaw conduct which falls on the wrong side of the line.
The easy response is to say we should legislate to create a statutory action for breach of privacy, and Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor has called for submissions in response to an issues paper on proposals for such an action.
It is not the easy way it is the appropriate way.
But let’s just think a bit more about that. Is such an action the best way or even necessary to remedy the mischief? Perhaps not. Tragically, Milly had probably been murdered by the time her phone was hacked. All current proposals for a statutory action recommend that it benefit only living persons, and that the action will not survive for the benefit of her estate.
But what about Sienna Miller, Elle MacPherson, Hugh Grant and anyone else (not famous) whose phones have been hacked by the media. So Milly’s estate should not have a cause of action. And fair enough. There is no good public policy reasons why the deceased should have privacy protections. But that is not an issue of controversy. Read the rest of this entry »