Defending your right to be free from intrusion
Australia’s consumer watchdog is suing Google for allegedly misleading millions of people after it started tracking them on non-Google apps and websites in 2016.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) says Google’s pop-up notification about this move didn’t let users make an informed choice about the increased tracking of their activities. Read More
In the US, tireless opposition to state use of facial recognition algorithms has recently won some victories. Outside the US, however, the tide is heading in the other direction.
Here in Australia, despite pushback from the Human Rights Commission, the trend is towards greater use. The government proposed an ambitious plan for a national face database (including wacky trial balloons about age-verification on porn sites). Some local councils are adding facial recognition into their existing surveillance systems. Police officers have tried out the dystopian services of Clearview AI. Should Australia be using this technology? To decide, we need to answer fundamental questions about the kind of people, and the kind of society, we want to be. Read More
We regret the delay since the last Newsletter.
The primary reason has again been busyness on policy issues, but to some extent the COVID-19 epidemic has also played a role.
The lockdown hasn’t greatly affected the workings of an organisation that has operated mostly virtually for decades already. However, it’s had a substantial impact on many of our most active volunteers. Read More
Consumer and citizen groups have significant concerns that Google’s proposed takeover of wearables manufacturer Fitbit would be a game-changer not only for how people interact with the online world but also for digital and related health markets. Regulators around the world –in particular those concerned with antitrust compliance and data privacy –must therefore give it… Read More
This year has seen some major cyber attacks which have crippled businesses. The malware attacks affecting Toll Transport, Bluescope Steel and MyBudget were probably all preventable. It is highly likely that human error was responsible for each attack. That bespeaks a failure in training and operations. An investigation of a data breach often reveals significant problems with compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles and problems with either the quality or the ongoing nature of training. Read More
Katharine Kemp, UNSW and Graham Greenleaf, UNSW The Australian government will need to correct earlier misstatements and improve privacy protections to gain the trust of the millions of Australians being called on to download the COVIDSafe contact tracing app. The draft Privacy Amendment (Public Health Contact Information) Bill 2020, or the “COVIDSafe bill”, released yesterday,… Read More
“This public health crisis is too important to risk a repeat of recent personal data disasters that undermined community trust in governments’ use of IT. The last Census, council exploitation of metadata retention, ‘Robodebt’, laws undermining encryption, and compulsory registration for an empty My Health Record loom large in public memory. The way this app… Read More
On 23 April 2020 in Australian Information Commission v Facebook Inc the Australian Information Commissioner successfully obtained interim suppression and non publication orders and orders to serve outside Australia and substituted service against Facebook Inc.
This is the first of what is likely to be a number of interlocutory judgments as the civil penalty proceedings slowly move towards a hearing. Read More
The Australian public is attracted by the idea of using technology to assist tracing contacts of people diagnosed with COVID-19. A proximity logging app is proposed.The Australian public, along with scientists and researchers around the world, are also very concerned about gifting future governments the power to impose contact tracing on the populace through the… Read More
Roba Abbas, Lecturer, School of Management, Operations and Marketing, University of Wollongong and Katina Michael, Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society & School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University The federal government has announced plans to introduce a contact tracing mobile app to help curb COVID-19’s spread in… Read More