Last week Optus announced what may be the largest data breach in Australian history, potentially exposing the personal information of almost 10 million people. Current and former Optus customers are at risk of their name, date of birth, phone number, email and physical address, passport number and drivers’ licence numbers becoming compromised.
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Concern about disinformation is higher than ever, especially as Australia faces an election. The allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US election represented a watershed moment when it came to understanding the potential for disinformation campaigns to be waged on social media. COVID and vaccine disinformation has further increased attention on the issue and the pressure on the social media platforms to address it.
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It is no surprise that Big Tech has become deeply unpopular. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the Facebook Papers to the dark side of TikTok and Google misleading people; the public is becoming increasingly aware of the invasive data collection, exploitative practices and harmful business models of the social media platforms that have come to dominate our lives.
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It is with great sadness that we hear of the closure of Switter – a sex work friendly social media platform – in response to an increasingly hostile regulatory environment that has eroded sex workers’ rights online over the last several years.
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If you read our newsletter or check the website you may have noticed that the Australian government is doing everything they can to rebrand as the world’s leading tech regulator. In the past few years we have been under a deluge of new laws, directives, industry codes… and yet none of them have fundamentally altered the way we interact with the digital ecosystem around us. Could the ongoing Privacy Act review finally shake up the system? And why do we also need an Online Privacy Bill?
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The Online Safety Act 2021 passed in June this year and comes into effect on 23 January 2022. Under Part 4 of the legislation, the Minister has the power to determine something called the Basic Online Safety Expectations (BOSE).
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