Australian Privacy Foundation – Occasional Newsletter
23 August 2022
We’re combining this newsletter with the Annual Renewal Notice
How to renew
- Check how much to pay ($275 Life, $40, or $10 concession), here
Note: If you joined within the last 6 months, it won’t be necessary for you to renew until next year’s notice - Pay the relevant amount into this account:
Bendigo Bank, BSB 633000 A/c No. 126879162
Include your name, so that we can reconcile the account - Email to us, saying you’ve paid
Call for Nominations
As you can see from the brief outline of activities below, the APF Board is buried in work to defend privacy interests. With a couple of recent retirements from the fray by major contributors, we’re short-handed.
Please consider assisting the Board, whether casually on a matter of concern to you, via one of the Committees, or on the Board. Details are here.
If you’re aware of talent who we should be approaching, please put us in contact with them, or vice versa!
Key Aspects of APF Activities during 2021-22
- Continued busyness, fighting against privacy-invasive behaviours, for privacy-sensitive practices, and for privacy protections. See at the bottom for a quick summary of recent major contributions
- A shortage of volunteer policy analysts and other active support
- We’re announcing waiver of the annual fee for volunteers who commit to
material assistance in relation to any of the following:
- research into new technologies, business practices and government initiatives that are likely to have privacy implications
- drafting and review of proactive Policy Positions
- drafting and review of submissions in response to policy-influencing opportunities in parliaments, governments and industry sectors
- frequent social media postings on APF’s behalf, in the appropriate communication-style for one or more particular social media channels
- drafting of old-fashioned, but still-needed, media releases
- identification of media reports of suitable quality and relevance, and extraction and posting to the privacy policy e-list of the text and the source, with optional commentary on the topic
- monthly maintenance of the APF publications index-pages (by date, by topic, and by jurisdiction)
Some Major Areas of Recent APF Activities
The Federal Election
- Media Release of 11 April 2022
- The resulting 2022 Federal Election Scorecard, version of 19 May 22
- The election-result was highly privacy-positive. The new AG has previously supported a privacy right of action, and the large cross-bench comprises Greens and Andrew Wilkie, whose platforms are strongly pro-privacy, plus ‘Teal Liberals’ who are moderately so.
Your(?) ABC Joins the Digital Surveillance Economy
Imposition of Mandatory Registration to use ABC iView
- Open Letter – 2 Mar 22
- ABC Chair Ita Buttrose’s reply of 8 Mar 2022
- Letter to the ABC Chair on 11 May 2022
- Media Release on 15 May 2022
- See also this blog-entry by a past chair of APF
Health Privacy
- Health Legislation Amendment (Information Sharing) Bill 2021 (Vic)
- National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) – a serious data breach
- The unjustifiably demanding ACT COVID ‘Case Investigation’ Form Health Insurance Companies’ Marketing of Wearables to Consumers
Australia’s Electronic Surveillance Framework
- Submission to Dept of Home Affairs, of 8 Feb 2022, in conjunction with QCCL and Liberty Victoria
- Australian Border Force’s Warrant-less Access to Smartphone Comms