A Department of Health funded project is copying medical records from GP databases into a central repository . The Primary Health Insights (PHI) project has loaded the medical records of as many as 25 million Australians into “the Cloud”. This is being done under the pretext of improving healthcare. Detail includes medications and prescribing dates,… Read More

Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia Queensland federal MP Andrew Laming has been accused of taking an inappropriate photograph of a young woman, Crystal White, in 2019 in which her underwear was showing. When challenged about the photo this week, he reportedly replied: it wasn’t meant to be… Read More

Luci Pangrazio, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Deakin University Children, like adults, are spending more time online. At home and school pre-schoolers now use an array of apps and platforms to learn, play and be entertained. While there are reported benefits, including learning through exploration, many parents are still concerned about screen time, cybersafety and internet addiction.… Read More

Thursday 28 January 2021 is Data Privacy Day. It is also the 40th anniversary of Convention 108 and the 15th edition of the Data Protection Day.

International Data Privacy Day this year will mark the 40th Anniversary of Data Protection Convention 108 (recently “modernised” as Convention 108+). To celebrate this event, the Council of Europe will be hosting a 90 minute Asia-Pacific virtual regional seminar on January 28th, featuring a range of speakers from Asia-Pacific civil society, governmental bodies, and privacy regulators, and civil society, including the Australian Privacy Foundation’s own Professor Graham Greenleaf.

Ambulance Tasmania has suffered a massive data breach. According to the ABC, personal information of every Tasmanian who called the Tasmanian Ambulance Service since November 2020 has been accessed and posted on line by a third party. The specific nature of the breach is unknown but it was to the paging system. What makes this breach so damaging is that the data accessed is sensitive information, relating to a person’s health status as well as that person/s age, gender and address.

What is both surprising and disturbing is that the data hacked from Ambulance Tasmania has been publicly visible since November last year.