For the previous 20 years, within the post-9/11 setting, they mentioned, Australia’s legislative focus has largely been on granting regulation enforcement and intelligence companies entry to non-public information. Questions of information privateness, consequently, fell to the wayside.
Whereas Australia faces the identical challenges as different nations, like laws struggling to maintain up with technological developments, another jurisdictions have been faster to answer altering shopper attitudes, Dr. Walker-Munro mentioned. Whereas right here, till now, “there hasn’t been a extremely huge robust push from customers to say, ‘This isn’t an appropriate manner of doing enterprise.’”
Australians have a usually lax perspective to information privateness, he mentioned, as an extension of our usually relaxed tradition. “We’re all simply type of like, ‘Yeah, it’ll be all proper, we’ll signal over our info to those huge firms and belief them to do the best factor,’ as an alternative of going ‘Why does the corporate want this info? When you’re glad I’m me, why do it’s essential to maintain my passport quantity, my Medicare quantity? Should you can’t reply that query, then eliminate it.”
In fact, some firms, like medical insurers, are at all times going to want to maintain delicate information. However there are already indicators of customers beginning to problem data-gathering practices in some industries, like the true property sector, the place renters may be requested to supply immense portions of non-public info.
The federal government’s robust response to the Optus information breach was promising, Dr. Walker-Munro mentioned, as is the very fact that previously few years, some departments, like Residence Affairs, have already began enthusiastic about information as a “nationwide asset,” which must be protected in the identical manner as we’d shield one thing important to the enterprise financial system, like an oil refinery or an influence station.
