This appeared last week
More privacy reforms urgently needed but not expected before election
12 August, 2024
The nation’s Privacy Commissioner says further reform in privacy legislation is “urgent” and “much needed” but those changes are unlikely to happen before the next election, due by May next year.
This comes after the Albanese government on Thursday introduced its first tranche of amendments to the Privacy Act.
The introduction of criminal penalties for doxxing – the malicious publication of personal information – has largely been welcomed by members of a WhatsApp group of 600 Jewish creatives who had been victim to doxxing earlier this year and prompted the new criminal penalties.
Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind welcomed the government’s first tranche of amendments but stressed the need for more reform.
“We are eagerly awaiting the second tranche of privacy reforms, dealing with much needed reforms including a new positive obligation that personal information handling is fair and reasonable,” Ms Kind said.
“The coverage of Australia’s privacy legislation lags behind the advancing skills of malicious cyber actors.
“Further reform of the Privacy Act is urgent, to ensure all Australian organisations build the highest levels of security into their operations and the community’s personal information is protected to the maximum extent possible.”
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has flagged the government will make more amendments. The Australian understands this is not expected before the next election.
Coalition legal affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said the opposition would “closely examine” the bill.
She drew attention to a few areas: new costs for businesses, the role of class action law firms, and the bill’s interaction with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws.
“The Coalition has only seen the bill for the first time today and we will now examine it in detail,” she said.
“We recognise the need for appropriate reform, but privacy is both highly technical and far-reaching.”
A spokeswoman for the WhatsApp group of 600 Jewish creatives welcomed the “positive” step taken by the government to stop “horrific Jew hatred” that had “swept” Australia. “These attacks against Jewish Australians have often been fanned by online agitators who have so far faced no consequences for their appalling actions,” she said.
In February, the names, mobile numbers, professions and photographs of creatives in the group were exported from the WhatsApp chat by a New York Times reporter who then passed the 900-page document to a person who was the “subject of a story”.
The proposed provisions would not be retrospective and therefore unable to address that incident.
“The lessons of history show that what starts with the Jews rarely ends with the Jews,” the group’s spokeswoman said.
Stuart Cohen, another of those doxxed, said the legislation’s enactment “could not come soon enough” and would protect not just Jewish people but all Australians.
“The impact of my name appearing on the list was limited but this doxxing has had a really terrible impact on many friends, family and associates who have been accused of all sorts of heinous crimes for which none are guilty,” he said.
Here is the link:
As best I can tell the ‘bad guys’ are inventing evil things to do to people faster that they can be legislated against!
A hopeless situation!
David.
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