Great cases on privacy ... Photographs of private moments ... Freedom of expression up against the personal private sphere ... The balancing process ... Sex and privacy ... Law enforcement investigations ... Landmark Cases in Privacy Law reviewed by Professor Barbara McDonald ... more
Category: Privacy
News organisations dismiss expansion of reputational remedies
Media submissions to the attorney general's privacy review ... Statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy ... Weighing the merits of the arguments for and against the statutory tort ... Impact on free speech ... A fertile litigation frontier ... Overlapping remedies ... Alan Zheng reports ... more
Privacy trumps state security in South Africa
Constitutional Court of South Africa strikes down key parts of the state surveillance legislation ... Interception and monitoring of a journalist's communications ... Breach of the constitutional right to privacy ... Bill of Rights ... Competing interests ... Lack of judicial independence ... Procedural unfairness ... Importance of journalist's secret sources ... Australian experience distinguished ... Anna Kretowicz reports ... more
HRH Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers
Mail on Sunday goes down in high profile privacy case ... Private letter from Meghan Markle to her father ... Summary judgment for claimant ... Dire warnings from newspaper commentariat ... Law not turned on its head ... Media law developments generally in favour of publishers ... Dominic Crossley comments ... more
Privacy and the COVID tracing app
The new COVID-19 tracker and legal protections ... Biosecurity versus privacy ... Need for a contract between government and users ... Prying by police and security agencies is forbidden ... How it works ... Hacking is inevitable ... A decentralised model would be less of a threat to privacy ... Social graphing of individual app users ... Workability ... The key issues clarified by Janek Drevikovsky ... more
Australian Information Commissioner v Facebook Inc & Anor
Information Commissioner takes on Facebook claiming the privacy of over 300,000 Australian was breached by feeding data to Cambridge Analytica ... "This is Your Digital Life" app ... Harvesting data from friends and associates ... Political profiling ... Systematic failure to comply with privacy laws ... Users unable to exercise reasonable choice over the use of their personal information ... Stephen Murray reports ... more
Poland v Hedley
Clandestine recording used by WA Today ... Lawful interest defence available under the Surveillance Devices Act ... Plan to dump toxic soil ... Private conversation in a restaurant ... Question as to authenticity of the exhibit ... Defence of qualified privilege ... Exemption under Act where publication is relevant to the defence of defendants' lawful interests ... Stephen Murray reports ... more
Ploubidis v Carling
Admissibility of voice recordings ... Surveillance Devices Act ... Whether recordings were "private" ... Failure to meet the legislative exemptions ... Circumstances when private recordings are admissible ... Gaining an advantage in civil proceedings ... Janek Drevikovsky reports ... more
Jane Doe v Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd & Anor
Likely identification by the media of a young sexual assault victim ... A significant case concerning alleged invasion of privacy ... No cause of action for breach of statutory duty and misuse of confidential information ... A distinction with Victoria's Jane Doe v ABC ... Journalist and accurate reporting of court proceedings ... Patrick George reports ... more
The key to encryption
The government's proposed law to unscramble encrypted communications ... Threats to citizens and journalists in particular ... Confidential sources placed at greater risk of exposure ... A new invasion of privacy amid an abundance of government intrusions ... Cybersecurity threatened ... Criticism from UN privacy rapporteur ... Nick Bonyhady reports ... more
Why the Cliff Richard case was wrongly decided
Sir Cliff Richard v BBC ... Misuse of private information ... Judge makes editorial decisions and arbitrates on taste ... Conflating privacy and reputation ... While there is a public interest in a police investigation there is no public interest in identifying individuals subject to investigations ... Journalistic quality of the broadcast ... Public interest in the rule of law ... Consequences of the judge's findings ... From Paul Wragg in Inforrm ... more
FOI and the WA Public Transport Authority
Test for exempt "personal information" under Freedom of Information Act ... Supreme Court reverses finding of Information Commission ... Identification of people in the footage ... Seven Network seeking tapes of level-crossing near-misses ... Louise Hall reporting ... more