Privacy

Stepping out for a fun night and a few drinks sure isn’t as simple as it used to be.

In case you hadn’t noticed, an increasing number of Australian bars and clubs are introducing security technology that would be more fittingly encountered in a Police state than a casual night out for a drink in one of Australia ‘s cities.

In a dystopian display of modern surveillance technologies overtaking common sense, nowadays if you feel inclined to venture out for a dance in one of Melbourne or Sydney ‘s bars or clubs, you can expect to have your ID scanned into a computer. And in extreme cases, be prepared to have your irises scanned as a pre-requisite for entry. Talk about a party killer!

Continue reading "Stripped of civil liberties for a night on the town" »

Fifteen years ago, when I was at uni studying Anthropology, Political Discourse, and the Hegemony of the Hate Media, I couldn’t have foreseen the day I’d be eager to defend Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers.

Back then I also thought a belly button piercing would give me a certain je ne sais quoi, when all it gave me was a deep and revolting infection. Things change.

But although I can feel my gorge and my blood pressure rise when I hear the way politicians pretend adverse media coverage is to blame for their entirely self-created debacles, it’s still hard to leap into the fray.

Continue reading "The News world is not as Limited as you think" »

Paul Keating’s fondness for picking up the phone to relay his displeasure about media coverage is the stuff of legend. From the half-dozen spirited conversations I’ve had as a publisher with the former PM, the most memorable went to the issue of privacy.

An item had appeared in Sydney Confidential about his daughter being spotted on a date with a rugby league player at a city bar. The article didn’t suggest any hanky-panky, simply that they had met for a drink. Keating didn’t think it should have run at all and took particular issue with the accompanying photograph, which had been tagged as digitally altered, featuring separate merged images of his daughter and the said footy star.

Keating prefaced his remarks by reflecting on the level of moral bankruptcy which would attract someone to a career as a gossip writer, and indeed a career as the publisher of their work. To give you a sense of it, in his opening salvo he described gossip writers as “ugly biker’s molls who couldn’t get a root on a troop ship, couldn’t get a root on a troop ship coming home” and he concluded that whenever he rang editors about articles of this kind he routinely received a lecture about public figures and the public’s right to know which had no relationship to the “horseshit” we chose to publish.

Continue reading "The right to privacy would come at a social cost" »

The Gillard government, in concert with the Greens, is planning to toughen up privacy laws. The immediate spark for this has been the appalling electronic hacking by the News of the World in the UK.

A cynic could say that this re-kindled interest in personal privacy is an attempt to put the carbon tax issue out of peoples’ minds.

There is a federal Privacy Act, which prevents private organizations from obtaining information about people without their consent. There is a federal Privacy Commissioner, whose task it is to monitor and act on breaches of privacy laws.

Continue reading "Push for toughened privacy is supreme hypocrisy" »

Moves are afoot in Ireland to lift the sacred secrecy of confession - so priests will be jailed if they don’t report child sex abuses revealed to them. SA Senator Nick Xenophon has been pushing for similar changes in Australia, arguing that innocent children deserve more protection than religious practice. We asked him for some more details.

What changes would you like to see in the way confessions are handled?

The admission of child abuse to a priest during confession should not be exempted from mandatory reporting requirements.  No church should be complicit in the cover up of child abuse just so some paedophile can attempt to clear his conscience.  The rule of law should come before religious beliefs, and there should be no exceptions.

Continue reading "Unforgiveable sin: Confessing to child abuse" »

In one of the earliest scenes in The Social Network, the nerds are shown using the net to rank the hotness of women at their university. That nerds are still using Facebook for these very same purposes a decade on should surprise few.

In recent days a private Facebook group has been exposed as trading in images of women. Of pilfering snaps from the pages of friends, of reposting them, of ranking the women like cuts of meat.

In a surprising twist, a group which clearly demonstrates no ethics apparently has a code of conduct for members including a mandate to never discuss the group, a rule I daresay imposed for fear of outing oneself as a geek, a letch and as a perv rather than to preserve any Stonecutter secrets.

Continue reading "Facebook ‘friends’ can pimp you out for kicks" »

Safe sex used to be simple. Step A: take one vending machine prophylactic. Step B: use it.

These days, everything is much more complicated. These days, protecting yourself from “going viral” may also involve checking for hidden webcams and erasing your ex-partner’s flash drive.

Most of Australia is now familiar with the case of the 18-year-old Australian Defence Force Academy cadet whose peers called her a “skank” and a “dirty whore” after a male cadet secretly recorded the two of them having sex.

Continue reading "When old misogyny meets new technology" »

This week online forums fired up with talk about whether or not you should be allowed to film births, after a report it had been banned. I’d like to know why you’d want to in the first place.

I know it’s all about documenting the miracle of birth and so on, but why would you even think about taking a video camera into a
delivery room?

Maybe there’s some confusion with the operating “theatre” concept.

Continue reading "Filming births: Why would you want to?" »

In today’s society, most Australians are pretty comfortable with sharing personal information, with at least one major caveat – that we clearly know what our information is being used for.

Understanding how the information that organisations collect from us is used is the key guiding principle of our Privacy laws. Our privacy regime is consent-based – if you understand why private and personal information is being collected and consent to the purpose for which it is being collected then that information can be used for that purpose.

Social media and the more successful Internet business models fundamentally challenge this notion – because commercial success is often predicated on knowing as much as you can about your individual users and being less than upfront about how that information will be used.

Continue reading "What is Google really doing with your personal details?" »

Is anyone really that shocked at a rugby league player having a big night on the turps?

The arrest in Brisbane this morning of Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston is, as Darren Lockyer said of his mate, a real pity for him and he’ll be cursing himself for (allegedly) pushing the boundaries with the cops.

But it’s neither corrupt like a salary cap rort nor a flagrant moral infraction like taking performance-enhancers. It’s a low-level bit of stupidity and right-minded people will assess it with a shrug.

Continue reading "Johnathan Thurston and the rise of the so-what scandal" »

It seems that Google’s continued mishandling of the wi-fi snooping incident means it has a different interpretation of the phrase “cooperating with authorities” than what the rest of us would reasonably expect.

The New York Times recently reported that Google has given European investigators only remote access to data now stored in Mountain View, California. 

Data those investigators need to determine if Google breached various tough privacy laws.

Continue reading "Google should be made to tell us what it knows about us" »

It’s an analogy that’s been used before but is worth using again, chiefly in the interests of promoting that landmark cinematic work The Naked Gun as an analogy for public life.

One of the best lines in the film – apart from the scene where, during a raid on a sex shop, the lady behind the counter looks at Lieutenant Frank Drebin and says “Oh, Hi Frank” – involves a wayward ballistic missile hitting a fireworks factory and igniting thousands of catherine wheels and flame-spewing rockets in the night sky. As the crowd gathers to watch this marvellous scene Lieutenant Drebin stands in front of the rubber-neckers and says “Show’s over folks, move along, nothing to see here.”

Some years ago when Eric Roozendaal was the state secretary of the NSW Labor Party he suggested that there was an inordinate level of media interest in a story involving Illawarra Labor identity Neville Hilton, a man who can best be described as morally dubious, who when not defending the rights of the working man in the ‘Gong was also the proprietor of the Southern Belles knock-shop in Port Kembla.

Continue reading "Pollies get pity but Shane suffers in his jocks" »

David Campbell has a lesser right to privacy than an ordinary citizen, for a number of reasons.

The first is that as a politician his entire existence is underwritten by the taxpaying public – his salary, his car, his living arrangements, his ability to travel, all of it is fully or partially funded by the public, and to an extent which massively eclipses the average wage earner. The second is that as a politician he wields enormous and direct power over the way we live our lives, even own financial status. 

The third is that as a politician he has chosen to project an image of himself in order to win votes – the happily married father of two, who has used his wife and children as a visual backdrop for his campaigns for local and state government. The fourth is that he is part of a government which has been distracted, to say the least, by a series of scandals in which poor decisions, corrupt conduct and even criminal conduct have prevented a minister or member from doing his job.

Continue reading "Why David Campbell has a lesser right to privacy" »

In recent months, and especially the last week, there has been a noticeable shift in public sentiment against Facebook.

The controversy surrounding the company’s decision to change its privacy settings have been further amplified by the murder of 18-year-old Nona Belomesoff. As I write a Pakistani court has banned Facebook in the entire country over a page encouraging users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

But since when did all this become Facebook’s fault? Why do we put such an onus on a corporation to act so responsibly with our details rather than questioning our acquiescence to handing over that information in the first place? Why is it we seem to be laying a portion of blame on Facebook for awful human behaviour rather than questioning where it grew from in the first place?

Continue reading "How it became Facebook’s fault" »

The internet offers a world of opportunities. But it also brings some new threats a lot of parents and young people don’t adequately understand.

The tragic murder or 15 year old South Australian girl Carly Ryan by a 50 year old Victorian man who travelled to Adelaide after grooming her on a social networking site brought home to many of us how badly our outdated laws deal with the new threats posed by the internet.

The fifty year old killer had pretended to be a 20 year old youth online in order to win over Carly’s confidence. With the support of Carly’s mother Sonya I introduced into the Senate a Private Senator’s Bill which would make it illegal for an adult to misrepresent their age while communicating with a minor online.

Continue reading "We need to be able to act when online alarm bells ring" »

What is it about our love affair with Google that we let them take wholesale liberties with our privacy, and sit back and watch what might be one of the largest data breaches in history go by without so much as a whimper?

After some prodding, Google recently admitted to European Privacy Commissioners that they had “mistakenly” collected the contents of communications between some computer users, as part of their “Street View” activities.  Mistakenly.  All around the world. For four years.

It goes something like this: specially equipped “Street View” vehicles criss-cross entire nations, taking photographs of our houses and streets, geo-tagging the location with both a GPS and also by “sniffing” for WI FI connections in the area.  That way, when a person uses a Google product to locate themselves (like Google Maps), and there are WI FI networks detected nearby, Google can triangulate the device and give you an approximate location.  Pretty cool, and nothing really too scary about that, even though there were privacy concerns raised at the time.  We trusted Google.

Continue reading "Google, the pot and the kettle" »

I used to work in this pub in Wollongong where come Census time some of the regulars would scarper for the hills. I also remember a bus stop near where I grew up bearing the graffiti: “NO AUSTRALIA CARD” for most of the mid 80s, so I get there are people who are a little skeptical (read paranoid) about the Government knowing their business.

But I just heard the Punch’s Mark Kenny at the Press Club ask Julia Gillard about the “Orwellian” nature of the proposed new ID number for Australian school students Phil Coorey flagged in the Herald this morning.

The Opposition quickly jumped on the plan, with Tony Abbott today saying: I think that people have names and I think that it ought to be possible to identify people’s performance based on their names, based on who they are.”

Continue reading "Why do people get so worked up over ID numbers?" »

“She is DEAD! F*CKING HAVE RESPECT FOR HER!” - Part of Tila Tequila’s tweet stream.

Hollywood has responded to the tragic death of 30-year-old heiress Casey Johnson in the only way that Hollywood can; by turning the attention away from the departed and on to themselves by outpouring their grief and sympathy - in 140 characters on twitter. The celebrity obsession with the micro-blogging site seems to be more addictive than prescriptive medication in LA.

Lindsay Lohan, DJ Samantha Ronson, Paris Hilton and Tila Tequila have all tweeted about the heiress’s death.

Continue reading "Tila Tequila and the end of grieving in private" »

Dear oh dear – the Queen of Australia and her other realms and territories beyond the seas – is very angry. She’s sick and tired of the paparazzi lurking behind the clipped hedges at Sandringham – her multi million pounds holiday house in Scotland – taking pictures of the rollicking royals on their Christmas break.

So angry is the Australian head of state, she’s threatening to invoke laws if any of the snappers are caught in the royal grounds – there’s nothing she can do if they stay outside the castle’s fences so the guess is ladders will be the orders of the day.

What the Queen fails to understand is that she, along with the other members of her family are nothing more or nothing less than paid public servants.

Continue reading "Memo, ma’am: The royal family belongs to us" »

It is grossly hypocritical of Paul Keating – or anyone else in the public eye – to complain about the media invading their family’s privacy.

I’m sick of politicians and performers, who trade their profiles for money, biting the hand that feeds them.

Keating’s daughter Katherine has a reputation for appearing at the opening of an envelope to promote her political lobbying business. But why turn up at a VIP party, sponsored by a vodka company, dressed as Amy Winehouse, if you don’t want to be papped by photographers?

Continue reading "Public figures want it both ways on privacy" »

This simple graphic illustrates one way the internet can be used to get an insight into a person, by analysing publicly available information associated with a name. I’ve chosen, for no particular reason, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull. Through the rest of this post are similar profiles of a range of Australian public identities.

You can enter your own details into the Personas tool here. If you feel uncomfortable watching the process of this tool scouring the web for information about you, that’s the idea. It was designed to show you have a publicly available profile which you cannot control.

Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it’s intended to highlight not just how you are seen on the web, but “for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories.”

Continue reading "What does the web think of you?" »

I am a social media whore. That’s the point of it all right? There’s a lot you can know about me from what music I listen to, what concerts I’ve been to and yes, even occasionally what I just ate.

There’s even a 12 second video somewhere of me dancing in a tutu to What a Feeling by Irene Cara.  All of which I chose to share across a number of social networks I belong to that include Blip.fm, Twitter and 12seconds.tv and I’m comfortable with that.

And then there’s Facebook.

Continue reading "Six million Australians are selling their lives to Facebook" »

Well, not quite. While it doesn’t compare to Fleet Street’s notorious hidden camera shot of Princess Diana pumping iron at a London gymnasium, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is apparently filthy that Woman’s Day has put a paparazzo on Therese Rein’s tail to chronicle her weight loss program.

It’s a story which goes to the heart of the privacy tensions within journalism - the difference between the public interest, and what the public is interested in.

It’s a story which will also confirm how the reading public has it both ways - illustrated most dramatically when the same people who bemoaned the media’s role in Diana’s death, were often the same ones who had every edition of Hello! magazine in chronological order at home.

Continue reading "Paparazzi give Therese Rein the Princess Diana workout" »