Greens call for Digital Rights Commissioner

Interesting proposal from the Australian Greens: a new role to sit within the Australian Human Rights Commission, solely focused on upholding Australian citizen’s digital rights.

From Senator Scott Ludlam’s announcement earlier today:

A Digital Rights Commissioner, working within the Australian Human Rights Commission, will work to scrutinise legislation, and will advise governments, departments and the general public on the effect of proposals, programs and legislation. The Human Rights Commission achieves their objective through education, legal advice, public advocacy and research.

Until now, debates about digital rights in Australia have almost entirely been reactive; to the Snowden disclosures, the mandatory data retention scheme, or the internet filter. Those discussions centred on the false choice between individual privacy or national security. An independent Digital Rights Commissioner will begin to change that, and help to bring forward informed debate about all of the impacts of proposed or possible legislation on our rights online. The Commissioner will help prevent the further erosion of those rights.

We at Digital Rights Watch endorse this policy platform. A dedicated Digital Rights Commissioner would be a huge step forward to acknowledging this area of human rights, and would allow for independent monitoring and legislative advice to be given to governments and the public.

Read the detail of the Greens policy on their website.

Find out where the Greens rank on all of their digital policies on our scorecard.