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
My Health Record: the case for opting out
Katharine Kemp, UNSW; Bruce Baer Arnold, University of Canberra, and David Vaile, UNSW Unless you take action to remove yourself from the My Health Record (MHR) system, the federal government will make a digital copy of your medical record, store it centrally, and, as the default, provide numerous people with access to it. If you… Read More
MEDIA RELEASE: Time To Stop The Privacy Trainwrecks
News that Facebook has given away personal information about many Australians is a reminder that we need businesses, governments and political parties to be accountable. Australians need better privacy protection. They can get that without a lot of pain, money or fuss. The Australian Privacy Foundation – on behalf of all Australians – calls on… Read More
Australia should strengthen its privacy laws and remove exemptions for politicians
David Vaile, UNSW As revelations continue to unfold about the misuse of personal data by Cambridge Analytica, many Australians are only just learning that Australian politicians have given themselves a free kick to bypass privacy laws. Indeed, Australian data privacy laws are generally weak when compared with those in the United States, the United Kingdom… Read More
MEDIA RELEASE: NSW Tribunal finds that the Opal card breaches privacy
The Australian Privacy Foundation has long argued that the requirement for registration for concession Opal users is a breach of the privacy laws. All users of the public transport system in NSW should have the right to travel anonymously and not be tracked. A case was brought against Transport for NSW by Nigel Waters (life… Read More
MEDIA RELEASE: ‘Open Data’: Too much sharing, too little care? Who’s reading your health information now?
There can be benefits from the ‘sharing’ (distribution) of health and other personal information among health care professionals and researchers. Any such ‘sharing’ must, however, be based on an understanding of potential risks. It must only occur within an effective legal framework, and controls appropriate for those risks. A ‘Trust me, I’m from the government!’… Read More
MEDIA RELEASE: Does privacy matter less if your data is breached by your State Government?
APF says NO! Go NSW!The Australian Privacy Foundation (APF) advocates for the privacy of all Australians, whether from Dubbo, Darlinghurst, Dapto or Darwin. While we often have to draw critical attention to privacy problems, we like to give credit where it’s due: NSW parliament is contemplating a positive step that others should follow.State and Territory… Read More
MEDIA RELEASE: Comprehensive national face database incompatible with a free society
Australia’s leading privacy and civil liberties organisations condemn the decision by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to provide all images from state and territory driver’s licence databases to the federal National Facial Biometric Matching Capability.
These organisations are the Australian Privacy Foundation, Digital Rights Watch, Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Liberty Victoria, South Australian Council for Civil Liberties and Electronic Frontiers Australia. Read More
Kissing goodbye to your health privacy? Governments must work harder.
This week ID information from the financial records of over 120 million people in the United States was hacked – the latest reminder that IT security failure is a global epidemic. Health records are just as valuable to hackers. The current system for storing and using health records in Australia is hopelessly deficient. But with lousy data security, and a world where data breaches are a daily event, the Australian Government’s reluctance to fix this problem is looking negligent! Read More
Privacy Climate Change
Privacy storms have increased in frequency and intensity, and it’s getting worse.
“Privacy underpins people’s lives. It’s not going away. Technology continues to heap threats on it. Organisations keep on blindly applying those technologies. People are getting fed up with these things. It’s increasingly costing business money, and government agencies trust”. Read More