Privacy R.I.P.
Are police watching your Facebook, looking at your private health records, banking details, and email addresses? Are they modifying or copying your data and posts without your knowledge, or forcing you to hack others on their behalf? If they didn’t have the power to before, they do now.
A Matter Of Privilege
Confidential communications between lawyers and their clients are sacrosanct. They are subject to legal professional privilege, which means they cannot be disclosed by anyone – including the lawyer – to anyone else – including the government, the courts, the police, or anyone at all – without the client’s express authorisation. That principle has been around for about 500 years, and remains a fundamental tenant of our legal system. But it has, at times, been sorely tested.
D’OH!!
Is it just me, or are we maybe making things just a little more complicated than they really need to be?
In the context of litigation, lawyers sometimes need to access and disclose copies of their clients’ financial and other records held by various government bodies. That means getting the client’s written authority to access their records, and then getting in touch with the relevant government institution. That should be pretty simple, right?
To D or Not To D
Last week was Privacy Awareness Week, which is a curious irony, given the current dilemma faced by millions of Australians – to download or not to download the Federal government’s CovidSafe App.
A Right To Know
Don’t you sometimes miss the good, old-fashioned Moral High Ground?
As a post-war baby, the world I was born into seemed a brave and righteous one. Our fathers had just fought and died to free us all from fascism and oppression. The world had paid a terrible price, but it was all worth it. In the end we won, and the Bad Guys lost.
Citizen John and the Genie
There’s a common misconception in some circles that only criminals, miscreants and ne’er-do-wells attract the attention of investigators like Federal and State police, corporate and other regulatory watchdogs, the tax man and the like. Most of us blithely go through life believing if we always try to act honestly and honourably there is no risk we will ever be targeted. Unfortunately, it’s just not true.
Welcome To Oceania
We live in an everchanging world.
Early in 2016, it was announced by the British government that a statue of the renowned English novelist, essayist and critic George Orwell, commissioned by sculptor and artist Martin Jennings, will be installed outside the headquarters of the British Broadcasting Corporation in London. It will bear the inscription of Orwell’s oft-quoted words “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Selective Amnesia
Remember that awesome pub-crawl you went on in first year uni, the one organised by your student social association, where you started on shooters, then learned how to play beer pong, the whole hilarious process captured on your mobile phones, got absolutely legless, and ended up dancing on the tables? Those were the days, right? Well the good news is, now you’re all grown up and considering applying for pre-selection in conservative politics, you can still revisit those good old days any time you want. The bad news is, so can everyone else. All they have to do is Google “beer pong,” and there you are, pitching ping-pong balls, belting back beers and head-bopping with the band.
Attack Of The Drones
With the currently almost endemic proliferation in Australian society of audio- and video-recording mobile phones, and the recent announcement by CASA of the relaxation of laws and regulations around the use of surveillance drones in Australian airspace, perhaps it’s time we all sat down to have a good hard rethink about some of our rules around privacy in this country.
The Do’s And Don’ts Of Telemarketing
In Australia we have some of the strictest telemarketing laws in the world and we need to. I’m sure everyone who reads this blog has received a telemarketing call at some stage or another from someone in India, the Philippines or even South Africa.
Privacy Talk – Australian Privacy Principles (APPs)
With Census Night just around the corner everyone is suddenly talking about Privacy. And so they should be. One of my pet hates is being interrupted midway through Friday Night Football to take a call from some company, usually the bank complaining I haven’t paid my credit card on time, and then being asked, for PRIVACY REASONS, a long list of questions to make sure I’m the person THEY CALLED!!! ARGHHHH!!!
Carly Nyst Addresses UN Human Rights Council
On Friday last week my dear daughter Carly Nyst, a UK-based Australian lawyer who is currently the Legal Director of the human rights group Privacy International in London, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on the right to privacy in the digital age. As part of a panel which included Flavia Panasieri , the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Catalino Botero Marino, Carly told the Commission that the right to privacy is a fundamental part of human dignity, which guarantees the protection of other human rights such as the freedom of expression, and should be jealously defended by the United Nations, particularly in the wake of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden Affair. The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Botero said the Commission recognised that systematic collection of data by governments directly affects the right to privacy and freedom of expression, and appropriate safeguards and controls must be elaborated to prevent those negative effects on human rights.