A man complained that Telecom refused his request for the number of a telephone used to make malicious calls to him. His request for details about the subscriber to that number was also refused.

I formed the opinion that he was not entitled to this information. The Privacy Act gives people a right to access personal information about themselves which is held by an agency. Therefore I had to consider whether the telephone number used to call the man and details about the subscriber who 'owned' that telephone number was personal information about him.

I considered that the malicious calls created a link between the caller and the man so that the caller's identity was information about the man receiving the calls. The Privacy Act would give him a right to access information about the caller's identity, provided Telecom held that information. However, while telecommunications carriers normally hold information about the subscribers to a telephone number, they will not normally hold details of other people who use the subscriber's telephone. The carrier may not know who made the calls, so it would not be possible to provide that information to the man.

I then considered whether the identity of the subscriber was personal information about an individual who has received a call from that telephone. Even if Telecom did not know the identity of the caller, it would know the identity of the subscriber whose telephone was used. I considered that the man was not clearly entitled to know the subscriber's identity because there was no direct link between them. Therefore, the man did not have a right to this information under the Privacy Act.

I also considered whether the man had a right to access the subscriber's telephone number, which was used to make the calls. The subscriber's name and the subscriber's telephone number are not the same thing because the telephone number does more than simply identify a subscriber. It acts like a return address. Rather than identifying the subscriber as the communicator, it states that the subscriber is a person with a particular number, and provides a means of contacting the person. Further information may be surmised from the number, such as the subscriber's approximate location. This information is more closely connected with the subscriber's affairs than the man's affairs. Although the caller's identity may be personal information about the man, I was not satisfied that this extra information was also about him.

For these reasons, I formed the opinion that the man did not have a right to access the subscriber's name and telephone number under the Privacy Act.

August 1999