Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Privacy Issue - Chief Justice Gleeson


While the Privacy legislation that is currently under review (see earlier posts) may be seeking to increase regulation and penalties for SME’s; Justice Gleeson appears to suggest that the boundaries of what is “private” may need to be rolled back; rather than expanded.


The National Press Club was the venue for the Chief Justice of the High Court, Justice Gleeson to deliver his final public address. During this address he said that he had begun to change his view that "certain things … were self-evidently private". "The ground seems to me to be shifting," he said.


"I used to think that having a telephone conversation was normally private. But you can't walk down the street without hearing a number of telephone conversations, some of them with people speaking loudly because of the noise of the surrounding traffic … "When you look at the kind of information that people publish about themselves, it makes you wonder." Justice Gleeson said.


Graham Greenleaf, an expert on privacy and information technology law at the University of NSW, said that legal definitions of privacy were "not static" and new technologies had enabled people to be increasingly willing to disclose information that would once have been considered private.


"The widespread availability of communications technologies that allow individuals to publish information about themselves that can be accessed by others is unprecedented in our society," Professor Greenleaf said.


The Privacy issue does not look like it is going anywhere so ensuring that the business process that provides governance for how information on Suppliers, Customers and Employees is collected stored and used is likely to become a much bigger issue for Enterprise size organisations and SME’s alike.
Posted by Kimmaree at 9:44 AM

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