[LINK] personally-held collections of personal data

[Roger Clarke]

On 22/03/13 10:20 PM, Karl Auer wrote:
>  ... what responsibility does one
>  have to *not disclose one's contacts to Facebook*?

At 15:56 +1100 23/3/13, Richard wrote:
>I have been wondering the same thing. I'm hoping to make an article out
>of it, but the early signs aren't encouraging: the privacy lawyers I've
>spoken to so far were pretty sure that the Privacy Act doesn't sweep
>this up yet.

How could it?

The Privacy Act is gutless even in relation to the parties that are 
nominally subject to it.  But they are all organisations, subject to 
many exemptions and exceptions, among others relating to size, with 
smaller private sector organisations almost entirely excluded.

Almost no privacy legislation has ever applied to individuals.

(Some exceptions exist in relation to such things as electronic 
communications, courtesy of the TIAA - which of course has a 
'security' not privacy motivation;  and the various Listening and 
Surveillance Devices statutes - which are tightly circumscribed and 
are used very little - mainly for things like upskirting I think).

And as regards 'yet', there's not much evidence of any drift in that 
direction.  The ALRC Report has been cherry-picked for all of its 
anti-privacy Recommendations, with very, very few of even the 
mitigating measures being adopted, let alone of the pro-privacy 
Recommendations.  And I don't think you'll find anything in there 
that could have created momentum towards privacy obligations being 
imposed on individuals.

(In early meetings, I specifically urged the ALRC to address privacy 
in the broad and not just data privacy: 
http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/Privacy.html;  but the ALRC 
Commissioner quite explicitly decided not to do so).


Going back to the original thread, I think Karl was thinking about 
moral obligations, and implicitly asking whether and when moral 
obligations might need to be translated into legal ones.


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

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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University