By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew and Lauren Hrysomallis
ASIC has further focused its attention on the duties of companies and directors with regards to cyber resilience with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew and Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid
Proceedings led by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) against Facebook, Inc. (Facebook) for their role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal will finally proceed in the Federal Court of Australia.
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Stephanie Mayhew
Earlier this week (on 29 November), the Australian Parliament passed the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 (Bill) which was introduced to Parliament on 26 October 2022.
The Bill amends the following:
By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Max Evans and James Gray
In the age of QR code check-ins and vaccination certificates, as Australia edges towards a post-pandemic (or mid-pandemic, it increasingly seems) “normal”, new research from the Australian National University (ANU) has revealed that Australians have become less trusting of institutions with regards to data privacy.
The ANU researchers said that the decrease in public trust between May 2020 and August 2021 was small but “statistically significant”. A key reason for this decrease, according to the researchers, was concern around “how their private data from check-in apps might be used by major institutions” as lockdowns and the use of apps for contact tracing intensified.
The institutions which experienced the greatest loss of trust were social media companies (10.1% decline), telecommunications companies, and federal, state and territory governments. This echoes sentiment from the OAIC following its recent ‘community attitudes to privacy’ survey that Australians trust social media companies the least when it comes to handling personal information, followed by the government.
While it remains to be seen whether this loss of trust becomes a permanent trend, one way to make Australians more comfortable with an organisation’s data practices – as reinforced by the OAIC – is to ensure the purpose of the collection and use of personal information is clearly understood. The OAIC has found that Australians are increasingly questioning data practices where the purpose for collecting personal information is unclear.
With increased penalties for privacy non-compliance looming, there’s never been a better time to revisit your privacy policies and collection statements to make sure that these are clear, so your organisation can stand out against this trend and build consumer trust.
By Cameron Abbott, Warwick Andersen, Michelle Aggromito and Max Evans
As a result of a recent class action, the Department of Home Affairs has been ordered by the Australian Information Commissioner, Angelene Falk, to pay compensation to asylum seekers after the Department was found to have interfered with the privacy of 9,251 detainees.
According to a media release from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) , the relevant breach stemmed from February 2014, where the Department published on its website a “Detention Report”, which had embedded within it a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet containing the personal information (including full names, date of birth and period of immigration detention) of 9,258 individuals who were in immigration detention at that time.
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By Cameron Abbott, Keely O’Dowd and Max Evans
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has released its report on notifications received under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme for period January to June 2020.
The OAIC reported 518 breaches were notified to it in the relevant period. The OAIC noted a 3% decrease from the 532 breaches notified in the period July 2019 to December 2019. However, there was a 16% increase on the 447 notifications received during January to June 2019.
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By Cameron Abbott, Warwick Andersen, Rob Pulham and Keely O’Dowd
On 9 July 2020, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) and the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced they have opened a joint investigation into the personal information handling practices of Clearview AI Inc.
The OAIC has stated the investigation will focus on ClearView AI’s use of “scraped” data and biometrics of individuals.
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Michelle Aggromito and Rebecca Gill
Nothing can stop us from talking about privacy, including a pandemic! Yesterday, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) issued guidance on the collection, use and disclosure of personal information during the COVID-19 pandemic (Guidance).
It mainly serves as a reminder to organisations that even in these pressing times, they must comply with the Australian privacy regime. However, it also highlights what organisations can collect and do with personal information for the purposes of preventing and managing the spread of COVID-19.
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Rebecca Gill
In a first for Australia, the Australian Information Commissioner (Commissioner) has launched proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia, seeking penalties against Facebook for serious and/or repeated interferences with privacy. The contraventions relate to the conduct disclosed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved the This is Your Digital Life app (App). We’ve previously blogged about the App here.
It is unclear how the penalties will be calculated in this proceeding. The penalty rate applicable to the relevant period (being from March 2014 to May 2015) is a maximum of $1.7 million. Some have suggested that fines may be in the billions if the maximum rate is applied to each individual affected as a single “contravention” (with possibly over 300,000 contraventions in total!). This may be fun to calculate, but highly unlikely to be applied in reality.
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By Cameron Abbott and Michelle Aggromito
With email being one of the most common forms of communication, it’s not surprising that inboxes these days accumulate thousands of emails that, perhaps, aren’t always electronically filed or deleted (not ours of course).
As the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has indicated in its most recent report on notifications received under the Notifiable Data Breach (NBD) scheme, email accounts are frequently being used for storage, and this raises inherent risk. Yes it’s convenient, but using email to send personal information, such as copies of passports, bank account details and credit card information, can very quickly lose its appeal. If the email account is accessed by a malicious actor through a phishing attack or a rogue employee, the end result can be exploitation of that information for criminal gain.
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