Privacy officers are extremely important. The Privacy Act requires every agency to have one. Most agencies do have one. But, that’s just the problem - only one. Being a privacy officer can be a lonely job, but the issues every privacy officer faces are often similar.

When you’re designing an IT system, you don’t necessarily know where the vulnerabilities are. That’s why you need to carry out some solid risk assessment as part of the design process. That’s why you pen test before it rolls out.

The current controversy about the activities of the Government Security Communications Bureau (GCSB) is inescapably about privacy. As such I, like my colleague the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence, want to outline my role.

Is it acceptable for a lawyer acting for a client to send a very private communication to a work email address of the other party?

Some privacy commentators consider ‘big data’ to be a newspeak phrase that attempts to repackage older familiar terms like ‘personal information’ in a way that reframes the concept and limits the way people think about the privacy issues. 

I had to buy a car for the teenager. OK, I didn’t have to but I wanted to. He could have bought himself a bomb but mother didn’t fancy the loss of sleep. It had to be something small and zippy (but not too zippy), and safe (like a zillion air bags safe).

Keeping children safe on the internet is a difficult task in today’s rapidly evolving technological world. To make it easier, the Privacy Commissioner in conjunction with Netsafe and supported by the NZ National Commission for UNESCO, has developed an online privacy resource to do just that.   

Since the publication of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, I’ve received a number of complaints and enquiries from people concerned about the book’s content. Each of those matters will receive the due consideration afforded to each of the 800 plus complaints and 9000 enquiries dealt with by this Office each year.