Privacy Commissioner John Edwards recently spoke to the Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN) Working Group on Digital Data Governance. The group had been discussing the use of the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses for data transfers between EU and non-EU countries.

One of the key observations in a new report on making our transport infrastructure more efficient is to not repeat information handling mistakes made overseas.

We recently participated in a two-day consultation on Big Data-Open Data at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. The session was convened by Professor Joseph Cannataci, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Privacy.

This guest post was contributed by Richard Menzies, General Manager, Uber NZ, to mark Privacy Week. It is the first in our Working with Industry series of guest posts. The Working with Industry series do not necessarily reflect the views of our office and are published to inform and stimulate debate on topical privacy issues and developments.

How far can you trust a product or service with your personal information? Our office wants to create a way for consumers to know if they are using a service or product that will protect their privacy and personal information.

The Ashley Madison data breach had its enforcement postscript this month, with the dating website’s parent company agreeing to settle with privacy authorities by paying $US1.6 million.

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.

It’s nice to be recognised, and this week we were pleased to win the People’s Choice Award from the NZ Open Source Awards.