(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has just completed a survey of Australians' attitudes to privacy.
That survey exposed the sometimes contradictory attitude Australians have to privacy in the digital era.
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Australia's information commissioner, John McMillan, says only nine per cent of people trust social media websites to protect their information and almost 50 per cent say it's their biggest point of concern and yet despite those fears, nearly everyone uses them.
Commissioner McMillan says the security of information people provide to online services is among the major concerns they have relating to privacy.
"Emails, websites, smart phones and the like. Close to 50 per cent of people nominated protection of privacy and online services as their major concern and there was associated findings. For example, more than 60 per cent of people said that they'd chosen not to deal with an organisation because of concern about its ability to protect information online and 74 per cent of people said that they were more concerned about providing information online than they were five years ago."
But Commissioner McMillan says the survey also found that many individuals themselves are putting their privacy at risk through their own ignorance.
"Close to 80 per cent of people said that they thought it was a breach of their privacy for an Australian institution to transfer personal information to another country. Now of course that's common place now. A lot of organisations store their personal information in the cloud, which may be located overseas. Many of the social media websites that people use, many of the games stations that people use are foreign sites and personal information can be transferred to those as well so that's an interesting contradiction in what people are doing and what they think is happening."
Dr Suelette Dreyfus is a research fellow in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.
She says the digital era has seen a major shift of power in favour of corporations and governments who have possession of an individual's personal information.
"I think one of the big problems that technology has introduced is that it's allowed governments and corporations to invade the individual's privacy much more comprehensively. On the other hand it's allowed them (the governments and corporations) to hide the information about what they're doing from individual citizens much more effectively. That's not a good combination."
Australia's Information Commissioner, John McMillan, says close to 90 per cent of people expect to be notified if there's been a breach of security surrounding their personal information.
Commissioner McMillan says legislation was before the federal parliament earlier this year, which would make notification mandatory if there'd been a data breach, but that legislation lapsed with the dissolution of the parliament ahead of the election.
But he says there will be some tightening of the regulations relating to that issue in 2014.
"Close to a hundred per cent of people said that they expect organisations to tell them what information they're collecting and how it's being used. There are new principles in the Privacy Act commencing next year that directly address that."
Dr Suelette Dreyfus, from the University of Melbourne, says breaches of privacy can come from many angles.
She says security services are continually wanting to gather more information on individuals and store it for longer, even forever.
"Most people I think believe that the places they visit when they're surfing the web is their private information and unless they're actually the target of a real criminal investigation with evidence that would satisfy a judge that they are actually engaging in criminal behaviour, that information should neither be taken by a government, stored by a government or analysed by a government down the track when they've done nothing wrong."
Dr Dreyfus says governments and security services should have to present a compelling case for the gathering and holding of information while organisations and corporations should have to show they've gained the expressed permission of individuals to use their personal details.
"I would argue that the default position in law should be that you own your own information about your name, your age and your birth date and where you live and how many children you have and that people shouldn't be able to just on sell that without your explicit permission."
The Australian Law Reform Commission is undertaking a period of public consultation as part of a review of Australia's privacy laws.
Commissioner for the inquiry Barbara McDonald says any reforms will have to balance the right of individuals to privacy with the right of the public to know about important issues in the community.
"Our terms of reference require us to balance freedom of speech and public interest and the terms of reference specifically require us to look at how that should be balanced with protection of privacy so that's the protection of freedom of speech, which of course involves freedom of the press, public interest and freedom of the press, freedom of the media to investigate matters of public interest of course is very important."
The Commission will prepare a report for the parliament that will include recommendations on how Australia's privacy laws should be reformed.
Commissioner McDonald says the accelerated pace of technological change in the digital era will make it difficult to write any possible ammendments that will not be obsolete as soon as they're passed.
"It's been very interesting getting, or just attempting to get on top a lot of the technology and what it can do and learning about the new things that technology can do. I think we're all finding that. We're all reading more and more about what this app will do or what computer programs the US security or English security or ASIO can use. The use of drones by people to carry out surveillance for example, just in Australia. The use of the way in which social media sites can be used. The way in which they can be, both tracking of fiscal movements and tracking of internet movements, all of that."
The University of Melbourne's Suelette Dreyfus says a crackdown by governments around the world against so-called whistleblowers is another threat against individual privacy.
Dr Dreyfus says by targeting whistleblowers, governments hide actions that include the gathering of personal information.
She says Germany, which has a long history of government spying on its citizens, recently changed its data retention laws to reduce the amount of data authorities can retain.
Dr Dreyfus says Australia should use the current review to define its attitude to privacy.
"This law reform review creates a wonderful opportunity for Australia to rethink, are we still in the era of the war on drugs and the war on terror or are we in the era of technology and privacy and the individual citizen."
