CCTV cameras mounted on vans have recently been seen in public parks around Melbourne, ostensibly to nab anyone breaking lockdown rules. They are part of a joint initiative between several Melbourne councils, Victoria Police and the Commonwealth government.

Coming on the back of Victorian police arresting and charging a number of people for inciting others to break bans on public gatherings by protesting in the streets, there is likely to be widespread resentment to the presence of these mobile surveillance units.

Many people are already claiming the Victorian government has once again over-stepped the mark in its aggressive approach to suppressing COVID-19. Read More

Throughout our lifetimes we consume, collate, curate, host and produce a staggering quantity of data – some by our own hand, some by others on our behalf, and some without our knowledge or consent.

Collectively, our “digital footprints” represent who we are and who we were. Our digital legacies are immortal and can impact those we leave behind.

Many of us take steps to secure our privacy while we’re alive, but there’s mounting evidence that we should be equally concerned about the privacy and security risks of our “data after death”. Read More

The recent questioning of the heads of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple in the US Congress has highlighted the threat their practices pose to our privacy and democracy.

However these big four companies are only part of a vast, sophisticated system of mass surveillance.

In this network are thousands of data brokers, ad agencies and technology companies – some of them Australian. They harvest data from millions of people, often without their explicit consent or knowledge. Read More

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

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

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

Katharine Kemp, UNSW and Kayleen Manwaring, UNSW On Monday, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) brought proceedings against Facebook in the Federal Court, asking the court to impose financial penalties for serious interference with the privacy of more than 300,000 Australians. To our knowledge, this is the first time the privacy regulator has… Read More