If you believe that an agency has interfered with your privacy, you have the right to complain to our Office. However, as a responsible regulator we need to screen complaints. Investigations can consume time and resources for all parties and will open a respondent agency to the possibility of litigation in the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

There are common reasons why we won’t investigate a complaint, so I will discuss some of the questions you need to ask yourself before submitting one.

Tell the agency

Have you gone to the agency first? You should put your concerns in writing to the agency before coming to us (although we recognise that sometimes this might not be appropriate). This will give an agency the opportunity to explain and maybe ease your concerns or resolve your complaint. Many agencies will be genuinely disappointed they’ve made a mistake and will be keen to find out and fix it for you. Give them that chance!

Jurisdiction

Do we have jurisdiction? Often a lot of upsetting things may have happened, and you may feel like your privacy has been breached, but we can only look at possible breaches of the privacy principles. Sometimes there is another regulator or agency that will have the powers or expertise to help you more effectively. 

Time elapsed

Have you waited too long to complain? If the privacy issue occurred over a year ago, and you’ve only decided to complain now, we may decline. This is because the older a complaint is, the more difficult and impractical it is to investigate. There are also the challenges of fading memories and change of staff and processes. It is also harder to determine how much harm has been suffered, especially if someone knew for some time, and yet did not decide to act.

Alternative remedies

Are there adequate alternative remedies available? It’s not really fair for an agency to have to repeatedly litigate the same issue over and over. If the matters you are complaining about can be remedied elsewhere, for example through court proceedings that are already underway, then you shouldn’t be “double dipping”. If legal proceedings have concluded and you are disappointed with the result, then rather than re-litigating the matter as a privacy complaint, you should consider appealing.

Evidence

Can you provide more evidence? The results of our investigations are determined by the information available to us. In addition, we may not be able to accept a complaint if there is no evidence that a breach occurred.

Domestic affairs

Is this a personal or family matter? We can’t look at the domestic actions of people in their personal lives, unless their actions were “highly offensive to the reasonable person”.

We will explain

If we decline your complaint, we will explain why. If you don’t understand or agree, let us know. Every complaint is different and unique, and we will be happy to change our mind if further evidence, context or clarifications persuade us. If you are still not satisfied with our decision, you can complain about our decision not to investigate to the Office of the Ombudsman.  

Image credit: Evidence of organised light by Jared Tarbell via Flickr

complaints, Human Rights Review Tribunal