Hooray, December! A time for work Christmas parties, end-of-year school concerts, days at the cricket and holidays at the beach. So many Instagram-worthy moments. But wait just a tinsel-hanging second – have you got consent to take or post that photo?…
Archives for 2015
A bridge too far: 85% of the world ignored at ‘international’ conference
Ah, Amsterdam. You can ride a bike, you can travel the canals by boat, you can walk around happily by yourself (ideally scoffing from a paper cone of hot frites doused in mayonnaise) or you can catch a tram with the locals, but you cannot escape one th…
Creepiness is in the eye of the beholder
Happy Halloween dear readers! As you carve your pumpkins, decorate your house with plastic spiders and work on your scary costumes, it seems an apposite time to reflect on … creepiness. Privacy practitioners are often called upon to determine whether o…
Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water on donor privacy
There is a debate going on in Victoria about when it is acceptable to override the wishes of someone who has explicitly refused their consent for their identity and information to be shared. Or in other words – when it is OK to break a privacy promise….
There’s more than one way to bake a pia
Although it is great to see Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) being discussed in mainstream media, the recent Lateline program on ABC TV was also depressing in its conclusion: that PIAs are not being done routinely (and if done, are mostly not being done…
Let’s take a ride on the privacy law reform merry-go-round
So, I have been approached by a NSW Parliamentary committee to make a submission on whether or not we need a statutory cause of action for serious invasions of privacy. My first thought was: why bother? We’ve been on this merry-go-round before. The ink…
Is Barbie the new Big Brother? The Internet of Things is here
Is it just me, or are things starting to get genuinely creepy around here? I’m not just talking about the trailer for the new TV show Humans, which looks like a gripping piece of sci-fi drama set in the not-too-distant future. I’m talking about the her…
Man made software in His own image
In 2002, a couple of Japanese visitors to Australia swapped passports with each other before walking through an automatic biometric border control gate being tested at Sydney airport. The facial recognition algorithm falsely matched each of them to the…
Privacy in the age of the algorithm: a primer in ethics for using Big Data
Brrr, winter is here! Time to crack open a red to enjoy with a lovely rich home-cooked lasagna. Except hang on – your pasta-buying habits have you marked down as a poor car insurance risk. You’d better hope you have a nice strong handshake to compensat…
Where’s Wally? Geolocation and the challenge of privacy protection
Those pesky little digital breadcrumbs are starting to catch up with us. A recent article in Wired noted that it’s not just your telephony provider who knows where you are – plenty of smartphone apps use a mixture of GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals to…
That’s a wrap: Privacy Awareness Week 2015
I think I am suffering indigestion, but it’s not from the delicious breakfast served at the opening event to mark Privacy Awareness Week this year. It’s more like mental indigestion, as my brain tries to absorb all the nutrients found in the smorgasbo…
Bradley Cooper’s taxi ride: a lesson in privacy risk
Hollywood heartthrob Bradley Cooper is a bad tipper. That was the conclusion drawn by media – though denied by his PR rep – when data about 173 million New York taxi trips became public. But I drew a different and more disturbing conclusion, which was…
Free search, free speech, and the Right To Be Forgotten
Search engines are wondrous things. I myself use Google search umpteen times a day. I don’t think I could work or play without it anymore. And yet I am a strong supporter of the contentious “Right to be Forgotten”. The “RTBF” is hotly contested, and I…
Hard or soft? The skills needed for a risk-based approach to privacy
This week I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on the Risk-Based Approach to Privacy. The keynote speaker was Richard Thomas, the former UK Data Protection Commissioner – although as he pointed out in his speech, he never liked the European term…
The Tribunal is curious: is your privacy program up to scratch?
Does your organisation have a program to train staff about their privacy obligations? Have you identified technical or procedural ways to minimise the risk of privacy breaches such as unauthorised access to records? If you can’t point to demonstrable…
