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What's New in Privacy
What’s New in Privacy provides at-a-glance information for Members and visitors to the iappANZ website about changes and other items of interest in the Australia and New Zealand privacy environments.
1 March 2010
AUSTRALIA: Information Commissioner Designate appointed by Rudd Government On 26 February, Australia’s Information Commissioner Designate, Professor John McMillan AO, was appointed by the Rudd Government. Professor McMillan has taken leave from his role as the Commonwealth Ombudsman to fill the position and will begin his new role in a week’s time. Through this appointment, Professor McMillan personifies the first steps in a very desirable shift in Australia’s access to information culture to one of openness and transparency in decision making. The Information Commissioner Designate will head the Office of the Information Commissioner, within which the Privacy and FOI Commissioners will operate. iappANZ President, Kevin Shaw, considers this shift in Australia’s oversight of access to information and privacy matters to be “an important step in addressing the often complex task of balancing the public right of access to information with the right of individual Australians to personal privacy”.
25 February 2010
ITALY: Google execs found guilty on privacy charges Overnight, the International Association of Privacy Professionals broke the news to the privacy professional community that a landmark legal decision has been made in Italy. In Milan, three Google executives (including Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer) have been convicted of failing to comply with the Italian privacy code when, as argued by the prosecution, they failed to do enough to prevent a disparaging video from being posted online. The video, which showed teenage boys taunting another boy with Down Syndrome, was posted on Google Video – a predecessor to YouTube, which is used worldwide and hosts a variety of user generated material. When asked about this landmark privacy decision, iappANZ President Kevin Shaw expressed concern about the extent to which privacy officers could be held personally accountable for the actions of the organisation for which they work. For him, this decision isn’t simply about who is responsible for content posted to the Internet – it is about the liability attached to decisions made, or not made, by privacy officers. “This is most concerning: we can always argue about the extent to which a company hosting user generated content should oversee the extent to which that content is appropriate. However, holding mid level executives personally accountable in this way is a very significant development that all privacy professionals (and other professionals too) should note with concern.”
Past What's New in Privacy items are available from the archive
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