Digital Rights Watch welcomes privacy reform, but more must be done urgently to bring our laws into the 21st century
Today, the Attorney General tabled a set of privacy reforms, which has been described as a first tranche. The proposed statutory tort and the plan for a children’s code together represent a good first step, but Australia remains decades behind other nations. There is a lot more to do to catch up.
Frankly, it is disappointing that we are here after three years of consultation.
Digital Rights Watch calls on the government to lay out a clear time frame for the remaining 100+ reforms that it has committed to implementing. Taking specific reforms to the election will ensure a mandate to resist the push back from the powerful vested interests who have always stood in the way of privacy reform.
The Privacy Act has not been meaningfully reformed in over 40 years, and it is urgent that changes be made, including to:
- Bring definitions into the 21st Century: the definition of personal information currently does not cover basic concepts like locational information and inferred information. It is out of date.
- End tick-a-box consent: we need an obligation on those who collect information to act fairly and reasonably, not give themselves a leave pass through lengthy T&Cs that no one reads.
- Lift the small business exemption: it currently means 95% of Australian businesses aren’t required to comply with any privacy legislation. This is bad for consumers and bad for small business, which has to make do with substandard off-the-shelf products.
- Providing enforceability: people need the right to sue in court for breaches and misuse of personal information at scale, which is likely not covered by the statutory tort.
We also note that the proposed criminalisation of doxxing has not been part of the consultation process for privacy reform to date and do not consider this a relevant improvement to our privacy regime.
Quotes attributable to Lizzie O’Shea, Chair of Digital Rights Watch
“Without genuine reform, measures like online safety, digital identity, cyber-security and child protection can only be performative. That’s because privacy reform is the foundation of a safer internet and a freer society.
“Business and government should be collecting less of our data, handling it with greater care and recognising our rights not to live under constant surveillance.
“And when data is collected there should be clear obligations to use it with care, delete it when requested and equally clear consequences when this does not occur.”
Media contact: media@digitalrightswatch.org.au