In 2013, UK Prime Minister David Cameron tried to instigate the sharing of UK National Health Service (“NHS”) patient data to private organisations for a small fee. Despite plans to anonymise the data, the move was sufficiently controversial that the Government had to drop the plan – there were major concerns over transparency and privacy. Eight years later, a similar plan has emerged, this time during the pandemic response of Boris Johnson’s Government.

In recent weeks, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has been contacting individual organisations about specific privacy breaches that have been raised with us. We’re taking a more proactive approach to remind and warn individual organisations of their statutory responsibilities under the Privacy Act 2020.

The Privacy Act empowers the Privacy Commissioner to receive complaints about breaches of the Privacy Act. The Act compels the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) to focus on settling complaints and preventing any issues they give rise to from re-occurring.

Cyber-crime doesn’t always pay, and cyber-policing is becoming a way to catch the criminals. Several recent news stories highlight how the online world has become a new frontier in crime and law enforcement.

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.

Successful responses to the coronavirus pandemic globally have invariably involved a high degree of compliance from the public. The extent to which people ‘follow the rules’ has determined the speed and effectiveness of governments’ responses to outbreaks as and when they occur.

When investigating complaints, we occasionally run across responding agencies who do not want to engage with our process. Given the nature of a ‘complaint’, there is often a complicated relationship between our complainants and respondents. Our goal is to act as a neutral third party to try to resolve complaints and assist agencies to meet their obligations under the Privacy Act.

Our personal information is precious. It is unique to each of us and tells a story about who we are.