[LINK] OzIT: 'Call for action on privacy' [Reprise]

[Roger Clarke]

[The Australian IT Section runs an 'IT reflections' segment, which 
re-prints articles from its early years as the main computer industry 
rag.

[Today's is timely, but from 40 years ago.

Call for action on privacy
Tuesday 13 August 1968

As full-scale computerised public databanks are now in the course of 
implementation in Australia, there is a vital need for a definition 
of an individual's right to privacy.

So said IBM marketing instructor Mr P.N. Rose at a Sydney University 
Law Faculty Seminar titled Computers and the Lawyer.

Mr Rose, a member of the databanks committee of the Australian 
Computer Society, said that once the individual's right to privacy of 
information were adequately defined the computerised databank, and 
the computer professional, as a team, would be able to provide 
greater privacy protection than presently existed.

It was apparent that uncontrolled growth and use of general data 
banks could lead to significant impairment of personal privacy.

Safeguards could not be built into a system once it was fully 
designed and operational.

Mr Rose said that since large scale databank systems were being 
implemented in Australia, there was only a matter of months in which 
to get this matter settled, other than by ad hoc decision to ignore 
any such right.


[Poignant, isn't it - with big government running rampant over a 
worn-out and subverted 1988 statute, business protected by the 
anti-privacy statute of 2000, and business (probably successfully) 
resisting further privacy protections, and even rolling back some of 
the protections that exist, such as the 1989 credit reporting 
provisions.]

[I don't recognise Mr P.N. Rose.  I got involved in ACS matters a few 
years later, from about 1972.  In 1973, Uni of Sydney's Law Prof 
Morison published his report, and in 1973-74 then NSW 
Attorney-General Madison was preparing legislation to regulate the 
still-fledgling computer industry.

[My role as Chair of the ACS Privacy Committee was to support 
legislation - for the reasons that Mr Rose put forward - but to 
ensure that it wasn't unduly harmful to the industry and profession.

[I sometimes wake up wondering if the limp measures that were 
enacted, and the 20-year delay before the federal Parliament did 
*any*thing, and the depradations of the following 20 years, were all 
*my* fault ...]


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

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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW