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In a digital environment, approval of a data transfer makes about as much sense as approval of an ocean current.
In its preoccupation with a perceived threat to its independence arising out of the recommendation for a private right of action for invasion of privacy, the media commentary on the ALRC's Privacy Report has missed its most significant aspects.
Among its many recommendations, the following deserve wide public discussion: regulating cross-border data flows; rationalisation of exemptions and exceptions; and uniform privacy principles and national consistency.
Regulating cross-border data flows
The existing law, which is based on the 1980 OECD Privacy Principles, regulates cross-border data flow by requiring an assessment of the level of privacy protection that will be provided to the data in the jurisdiction to which it is being transferred. While some flexibility is built into the tests, the basic concept is that privacy protection in the receiving jurisdiction should be similar to that in Australia. This approach was also taken, in a more bureaucratic form, in the European Union's Privacy Directive of 1995.
By Craig Scroggie
As Web 2.0 technologies and the threat landscape continue to evolve, it's now more important than ever that both private and public sectors join forces.
Last week, I participated in the Over the Horizon Visionary forum which was held as part of National E-security Awareness Week. The forum was attended by a number of industry representatives from across Australia and aimed to promote discussion on the government's future e-security policies. One of the discussion groups at the forum focused on how the public and private sectors can partner to better educate the public on safe Internet practices.
Many in the group, including myself, agree that there needs to be a working partnership between the public and private sector to educate and equip Australian PC users. By working in collaboration and building a strategy around education, the public and private sector can help make the Internet a positive and safe place to learn, communicate, and socialise.
By Julie Inman-Grant
While we all have our own safety guidance, coming together to consolidate these messages and working across sectors is critical to making impact with consumers.
What's the first thing you do when you leave you house? If you're like me, and most people I assume you check that you've got your keys and turn around and lock the door. It's such a simple, and probably entirely automatic act, but it's a crucial step in protecting your home and family from invasion and theft.
But what do you do when you get up and leave your computer? Do you have a lock in place, do you have protection against viruses, and do you let people you don't know into your life, sharing with them private information? What we're essentially talking about is "physical security" and therefore we must secure our computers with technology in the same way we secure the doors to our homes.
By Jody Melbourne
Give your kids freedom on the Internet rather than impose authority or try to limit them.
The "command and control" approach to keeping children safe from online Cyberbullying is doomed to fail in this age of social networking. Parents need to adopt a high-vigilance, low-touch approach when supporting their children to survive the epidemic of Cyberbullying that is sweeping Australia and many other countries. Last year, South Australian police revealed they were receiving reports of Cyberbullying on an almost daily basis.
"Cyberbullying" is a term coined to describe the age-old practice of schoolyard bullying extended online, using technology as a tool to harass an individual. Examples of Cyberbullying include spreading nasty rumours by email or online postings; publishing online or emailing embarrassing photos or videos; making abusive comments online; and even threatening or intimidating someone online.
Lack of transparency has a negative impact on the company’s value.
A rather popular topic these days is the risks to organizations of using social networks. An article in today’s Australian Financial Review examines the issue in detail, with an interview of me (excerpted below) hopefully balancing out the other opinions expressed in the article. Unfortunately the way I was quoted seemed to overemphasize my cautions relative to the benefits I discussed.
I am finding it very tiresome to continuously hear security consultants and vendors with big PR budgets go on endlessly about risks, without ever mentioning business benefits. This drone gets into executives’ heads, and as a result discussion of social networks – and many other potentially valuable business tools – focuses on risk and not benefit.
My Enterprise 2.0 Governance Framework explicitly addresses risks, benefits, and actions. It is critical to acknowledge, understand, and minimize risk, but executives are equally culpable if they ignore business value as if they ignore risk.
A 1967 prescient article by Arthur R. Miller shows that forty years ago, EHR and a national criminal data base seemed just around the corner, just as they are today.
As today's rapid advances in computing technology fuel heated debate over the proper ethical, legal and practical boundaries to state and commercial data collection, it is easy to forget that although the technology is novel, the issue is nothing new.
A long tradition of dystopian novels, such as Kafka's 'The Trial', Zamyatin's 'We' and Orwell's '1984', warned of the dangers of the overbearing, bureaucratic state while, in grim reality, the oppression of people under communism was facilitated by a massive exercise in the collection and collation of information. Computers were rare and primitive in East Germany, yet the state maintained secret files on a quarter of its population and perhaps one adult in seven informed on their friends, neighbours and colleagues to the Stasi.
The one unifying theme in past predictions of the future is their hopelessly dated nature today, but noted American legal scholar Arthur R. Miller did write a prescient article "The National Data Center and Personal Privacy" in the Atlantic Monthly of November 1967 warning of the dangers posed to personal privacy by computerised Government data banks. His arguments, further developed in 'The Assault on Privacy: Computers, Data Banks, and Dossiers' in 1971, remain interesting less for their occasional paranoia regarding Governmental intentions than for their similarity to concerns raised as if novel today.
