This post is about an example of how legislation and privacy are being dealt with in Australia. I’m talking about Fairfax journalist Ben Grubb and his arrest after posting this article online. He was covering AusCERT, a tech convention in Queensland where a security expert demonstrated how he could access photos with high security settings on Facebook. In front of an audience, Christian Heinrich showed how quickly and easily he could find the photos of the wife of Chris Gatford (another security expert, apparently the two are not friends).
Grubb was arrested, not for reporting on the event, but because he got Heinrich to send him the photos after the demonstration – according to Queensland police, this was accepting stolen goods, just like a stolen car. He reported on his experience here, talking about how scared he was. Wouldn’t we all be scared? Police let him go, and eventually gave him his iPad back too. They said that they were still learning how to react in the online world to security issues of this nature. This also ties into the Brocial Network that I have also blogged about.
This incident brings up many issues and questions.
-What is private and what is not? Will anything ever be private?
-The people making and enforcing legislation online don’t always understand what they are doing and are often falling behind the times.
-Anyone who publishes or re-publishes something needs to be ready for the legal implications.
This is a quick wrap up of the Australian laws pertaining to this issue:
Facebook’s Privacy Policy states that users can use the copy and paste functions to capture any information from Facebook. The men in the Brocial Network group may have infringed the privacy rights of the women whose photos they had appropriated, but the property was not unlawfully obtained. Presently, there is no right to privacy at common law or under legislation in Australia.
Companies like Facebook are subject to the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 which governs the use, disclosure, collection and storage of personal data of Australian residents by companies. The Privacy Act does not, however, apply to individuals, and there is also an exemption for the media (though there is a set of Privacy Standards which have been developed by the Australian Press Council which its member media organisations are committed to observe).
It comes from this article by Veronica Scott and Kate Ballis.
sallyspeaks 