faulker03

Attorney General Mark Speakman has announced the proposed appointment of Samantha Gavel as NSW Privacy Commissioner. T he Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Ombudsman, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission and the Crime Commission gets  to confirm the appointment... or otherwise. And the good news, many years late, is that the government will make the position full time.  The Commissioner has  been part-time since the first appointment in 1999  and for long periods there was an Acting Commissioner, including 2003-07 and 2009-2011.  “Ms Gavel is a leader in privacy protection who is currently the National Health Practitioner Ombudsman and Privacy Commissioner, and was previously the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman for six years,” Mr Speakman said in a Media release  Paris Cowan in IT News in February recounted how privacy regulation everywhere around the country is under resourced. Budgeted expenditure for the Information and Privacy Commission in 201...

The Australian Privacy Foundation Election Challenge-party responses to Ten Vital Privacy Issues cross-checked against their public platforms- presents a dismal outlook for the priority and approach they give to privacy protection . (They didn't bother asking about position regarding the 2009 Australian Law Reform Commission recommendation that political parties exemption from the Privacy Act should be removed- the response too predictable I imagine.) (Some omissions in original now corrected) In descending order of inadequacy, the best: The Pirate Party scored 95/100 on the Challenge . The Party has a very comprehensive platform , which is very positive on human rights and privacy issues, particularly in its heartland area of the digitally literate. The Party provided specific, clear and positive responses to the APF's Election Challenge . The Greens scored 94/100 . The Party remains close to the people who they represent. They have long had, and retain, an enligh...

opensource.com The South Australian Law Reform Institute Final Report on A Statutory Tort for Invasion of Privacy includes 34 recommendations fleshing out the detail of its principal recommendation that the South Australian Parliament should enact a limited cause of action for serious invasions of personal privacy. The report remind s in 1973, the former South Australian Law Reform Committee recommended that a general right of privacy be created;  bills to establish that right were introduced into the parliament in 1974 and again in 1991 but were both defeated ; the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2008, the NSW Law Reform Commission in 2009, and the Victorian Law Reform Commission in 2010 recommended the introduction of a statutory cause of action for invasion of privacy; the Australian Law Reform Commission returned to the subject again in 2014 when the report "Serious Invasions of Privacy in the Digital Age" recommended that if a cause of action for serious invasion...

Not...  as two experts outline years of failure to pay attention to privacy protection. Dr Roger Clarke in a detailed working paper examines the last 15 years' incursions into human rights based on 'the terrorist threat' and highlights the limited attention paid to privacy impact assessment: Democracy in Australia is gravely threatened by a flood of measures harmful to human rights that have been introduced since 2001, and a large proportion of which are unjustified and not subject to effective controls. The passage of these measures through the Parliament has been achieved on the basis of their proponents' assertions and without appropriate scrutiny. Parliament had available to it various forms of impact assessment techniques, but failed to require that such methods be applied. The study reported here found that one particular form of evaluation, Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), should have been performed, but was seldom applied, and where it was applied the process a...

With the functions of the three commissioners that make up the Office of Australian Information Commissioner now in the hands of a single acting commissioner , Timothy Pilgrim's 'in folder' will be heavily loaded with important matters.  None more so than files concerning non delegable functions that the commissioner only can exercise such as freedom of information review decisions, and determinations on privacy complaints not resolved by conciliation. The latest published FOI review decision is on a matter lodged with the OAIC in April 2014. The latest published privacy determination is on an application lodged in August 2013. How many applications remain in the queue and how long they have been there is not known.  The latest Quarterly Statistics about Freedom of Information and Privacy complaints and reviews published by the Office are for the period April - June 2014, before the cutbacks on funding announced as the government launched its initiative to abolish the...