[LINK] Super fund security breach lands good Samaritan in hot water

[Roger Clarke]

At 16:43 +1100 19/10/11, Alex (Maxious) Sadleir wrote:
>The NSW and Federal Privacy Commissioners are not amused and will be
>making further inquiries:
>http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/super-sloppy-first-state-customers-kept-in-the-dark-20111019-1m7g6.html

See my comments of 09:42 - to the effect that whether or not the 
actions of the vigilante, or the rotten design of the bank, were in 
breach of privacy laws is prettymuch irrelevant.

The NSW PC'er may end up saying something reasonable at least, 
whereas the federal PC'er sees his function as being to absolve the 
miscreant organisation, so his conclusion will not only be delayed, 
and based solely on information provided by the organisation, but 
will also be weak as dishwater.  (Well, I'm only speaking on the 
basis of all previous precedents, so I guess I *could* be wrong).

My other comments don't seem to have been factored into the 
discussion this afternoon either, e.g. re mens rea being a feature of 
the NSW Crimes Act provisions (and I believe these are a rendition of 
the model code, and hence likely to be in other States' laws as well).

Maybe my emails are filtered out by more people's agents than I thought ...

-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

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Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University