Lucinda Thorpe is a human rights advocate with a background in international relations and education, dedicated to improving privacy reform in Australia. She helps lawyers and the wider community better understand the importance of protecting personal information in a changing digital world.
Dating apps play a significant role in gender-based violence by providing perpetrators direct access to potential victims.
A closer look at dating app data practices shows that dating apps expose users to additional harms by monetising their personal data, a problem exacerbated by emerging AI tools.
Internet blackouts occur when repressive governments instruct internet service providers to block or restrict access to the internet. Local laws require providers to comply with these orders so there are very few examples of internet companies successfully resisting them. Internet blackouts are becoming increasingly common: in 2024, governments imposed 296 internet shutdowns on 54 countries.
Police forces are rapidly adopting AI, placing at risk the human rights they are meant to protect.
Victoria Police use generative AI on 20% of crime reports. When a contact centre employee files an online crime report, they use generative AI on the form to generate a summary for police officers.
Grok, an AI embedded within Twitter/X, is being used to digitally remove women’s and children’s clothing, and the results are being posted publicly.
Social media companies harvest vast amounts of personal data and use it to push whatever will keep you engaged, even when that means prioritising attention over accuracy, safety, or wellbeing. This can result in mental health harms for all users, including increased levels of depression, anxiety and body image dissatisfaction. Everyone would benefit from reform that stops personal data being used to feed people content that captures attention at the expense of their wellbeing.
However, rather than address the root causes of this harm the Social Media Ban complicates the landscape and creates additional privacy risks for all of us.
This is your guide to how to navigate this new terrain.
We are living in an age of surveillance, and it has never been more important for individuals to have the knowledge and tools to defend their privacy. Understanding what constitutes a legal breach of privacy empowers people to take action.