Individual Privacy In Australia

I. Analysis of question 1

In the question 1, there are three legal issues that need to be analysed comprehensively.

1. The extent to which individual privacy is being protected by Australian regulation.

a. Privacy and human rights

Privacy is one aspect of the human rights that is recognised and protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights art 6 and art 12. In those article 6 and 12, the privacy of individual involving their life and daily communication with the others must be protected from any interception under the law and regulation. Even though the right to privacy is recognised as the human rights, the implementation of such protection is not being applied properly in Australia. In fact, there is no legislation of the human

Although this act aimed to provide protection of individual privacy from unauthorised access, this act contains some serious problems. Firstly, the scope stipulated in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) is very limited since it just aims to handling personal information in the public sector. In other words, this act does not provide protection for the private sector, such as corporations and organisations. Consequently, many claims related to the privacy in the private sector cannot be processed because they fell outside the Federal Privacy Commissioner’s (“FPC”) jurisdiction. For example, in 1998-1999, the FPC received 9000 enquires connected with the issue of privacy, but only 131 complaints succeeded to be followed up by the FPC in the formal investigation. Meanwhile, 65% of the total complaints fell outside the FPC’s jurisdiction. Secondly, the disclosure of personal information specified in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) is riddled with many exemptions. Consequently, it seems that this act facilitates the government agencies to easily access and use personal information from record keepers. For example, a record keeper may disclose personal information for purposes that are contrary with the original purpose

However, it seems that the aim of those acts is not to strengthen the protection of the right to privacy, but it is made to justify the breaches of the privacy rights under the national security reason. For example, in the Anti Terrorism Act 2005 (Cth), a person, who has been a subject to a control order, is required to wear a tracking device and must report to someone at a certain time and place.

d. Conclusion

According to the analysis of the Australian legislation as above, it can be concluded that the individual privacy in Australia has not been properly protected by the Australian legislation. The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and its amendment still have many problems that need to be solved immediately. Moreover, the establishment of the other regulation weaken the protection of the privacy rights since it justifies the violation of the right to privacy made by the government agencies. Therefore, Australia needs more powerful legislation that is dedicated to provide more protection to the privacy rights.

2. The extent to which the protection of privacy in Australia has