[LINK] Major New Business Deal for Australia Post and Telstra

[Roger Clarke]

"Rowe, Joshua" <Joshua.Rowe@auspost.com.au> posted:

Major New Business Deal for Australia Post and Telstra
http://www.post.com.au/mediacentre/index.asp?link_id=1.180
Australia Post, Telstra team up
http://www.australianit.com.au/common/storyPage/0,3811,1446171%5E442,00.html
Telstra, AusPost trade business service delivery
http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/breaking/20001123/A32842-2000Nov23.html
The PMG lives!
http://www.itnews.com.au/story.cfm?ID=4859


There's considerable logic in this deal;  but watch one catch:

>The services which Aussie Post will take over for Telstra include:
>-   receipt and processing of orders;
>-   credit management
>-   warehousing, assembly and inventory control;
>-   distribution and reverse logistics (returns) of retail products;
>-   call centre functions for mobile net dealers and phone card agencies;
>-   on-line capability for order processing and tracking

OzPost is already one of the worst of all privacy invaders in the country
(e.g. king of the marketing lists, and purveyor or personal addresses
including forwarding-addresses).  Telstra has a massive database too, and
whether the long drawn-out ACIF process will result in much privacy
protection is pretty dubious.

This deal legitimise transfer of data between the two of them.  That's
because at present companies can do anything anyway;  and the current
Legitimisation of Privacy-Invasive Practices Bill confirms that power, by
authorising any secondary use of personal data that any business can dream
up.

So all of the data that you have ever provided, and will ever provide, to
each mega-organisation, and all data that they have ever gathered, or will
ever gather about you from any other source (government 'public registers',
companies they take over, companies with which they enter into strategic
partnership, etc.) just became totally accessible to both of them.

For a summary of the argument against such things, see:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/InfoBase99.html#Arg

On the specifics of consumer profiling, see:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/PaperProfiling.html


Roger Clarke              http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

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