Category: Privacy

With Census Night just around the corner everyone is suddenly talking about Privacy. And so they should be. One of my pet hates is being interrupted midway through Friday Night Football to take a call from some company, usually the bank complaining I haven’t paid my credit card on time, and then being asked, for PRIVACY REASONS, a long list of questions to make sure I’m the person THEY CALLED!!! ARGHHHH!!!
Have you checked your credit status lately? Chances are you’ve never heard of organisations like VEDA, Dunn and Bradstreet or Experian, but you can bet they’ve heard of you. They provide credit reports to financial lenders. So if you have a credit card or phone, or you’re named on a utility bill, or if you’ve ever applied for a loan of any kind, then almost certainly at least one of them will have a detailed file on you. According to its latest report, Veda alone holds credit information on 20 million Australians.
On Friday last week my dear daughter Carly Nyst, a UK-based Australian lawyer who is currently the Legal Director of the human rights group Privacy International in London, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on the right to privacy in the digital age. As part of a panel which included Flavia Panasieri , the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Catalino Botero Marino, Carly told the Commission that the right to privacy is a fundamental part of human dignity, which guarantees the protection of other human rights such as the freedom of expression, and should be jealously defended by the United Nations, particularly in the wake of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden Affair. The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Botero said the Commission recognised that systematic collection of data by governments directly affects the right to privacy and freedom of expression, and appropriate safeguards and controls must be elaborated to prevent those negative effects on human rights.