I was recently lucky enough to attend the Asian Privacy Scholars Network 5th International Conference, hosted by the Business School at the University of Auckland.

It’s possible that you haven’t heard of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). However, it is likely that the ITU affects your life in some way. The ITU is the UN agency responsible for information and communication technology. One of their key functions is standard-setting. They set the technical standards that make it possible to send a text message to an overseas phone without having to get some kind of complex adaptor; they also help to assign satellite orbits so that you don’t get abrupt service interruption from two (or more) satellites crashing into one another.

The International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners has been meeting each year since 1979. It has evolved into a reasonably structured format, governed by a five-member Executive Committee consisting of the current year’s host, the previous year’s host, and three elected members.

The International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, which New Zealand has chaired since 2014, had its 38th annual meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, in October, but more on that later.

If you’re interested in privacy research, you might want to be in Auckland during the week of 12-16 December. So much is going on that the Privacy Commissioner has named it Privacy Research Week.

New Zealand’s progress in child welfare recently came under international scrutiny by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Information sharing, Predictive Risk Modelling (PRM) and Approved Information Sharing Agreements (AISAs) were some of the current developments assessed by the Committee.

Mark your calendars as Auckland will host three international privacy events in December.

Privacy authorities typically perform regulatory and enforcement functions on their own - or occasionally with another public body - within their domestic jurisdiction. They know the domestic law they enforce. The law will clearly lay out the authority’s role and provide a clear pathway to the intended outcomes.