Holes in Australia's draft privacy bill will mean that 94 percent of Australian businesses will be exempt from the proposed legislation -- supposed to promote trust in online services.
This figure was provided by Tim Dixon, privacy specialist at Baker and McKenzie and member of the Senate Select Committee on IT, while speaking at a privacy seminar in Sydney, Tuesday.
"The more people are using technology, the more they're concerned about privacy," Dixon said.
The 94-percent figure is based on the fact that large sectors of Australian business -- such as small businesses earning less than AU$3 million per year -- will not be covered by the bill.
The Senate Select Committee on Information Technology held two public hearings in Sydney this week to discuss the government's draft bill, which seeks to legislate data privacy in Australia's currently self-regulated private sector. The general public was invited to attend.
Dixon said that with a large proportion of Internet users were already practising "privacy assertive behaviour" and giving false information, it should be the government's aim "to get people online and using technology in a way that they feel safe".
Lower standards?
Like the US, Australia hasn't moved to the EU standard of data
management followed by countries such as Hong Kong and New Zealand.
"The real risk if we establish a lower standard in Australia is that we will be changing standards in the future," Dixon said.
Tony Hill, executive director at the Internet Society of Australia, agrees that the proposed legislation must be strengthened, especially to plug the loophole for small businesses.
Hill believes that large businesses will make "artificial arrangements" to seek such exemptions and "because of such exemptions the draft bill wouldn't be sufficient to meet EU compliance".
"B2C e-commerce is a very important area and it's important to generate trust," Hill said. "There's only five percent of Australian adults currently purchasing online. They're waiting for a more trusting environment," he added.
Government's poor scorecard
The Australian Labor Party's Senator Kate Lundy also expressed today her
"profound disappointment" in the weakness of the draft bill and said the
government's own handling of customer privacy is an example of "how
badly it can go wrong".
Lundy pointed to the Australian Business Register, as an example, where a Web site provided details associated with all entities (including individuals) who had registered for an Australian Business Number under the nation's new taxation system.
"Outsourcers helped [the government] with the technology and were not fully conversant with issues of privacy. As a result the database was structurally flawed in terms of the significance of privacy," Lundy said.
Chair of the Senate Select Committee on IT, Senator Jeannie Ferris of the Australian Liberal Party agreed that "advantages in technology have made information more accessible and more damaging".
Surfing the Web creates a trail that is often manipulated for marketing reasons. Ferris pointed to surveillance technology that draws behavioural sketches of consumers from the electronic transactions they conduct.
"Big Brother was once thought to be the government but commercial organisations are taking over that [role]," Ferris said.
The Senate Select Committee will use the evidence collated at this week's hearings to help formulate a report on the Privacy Amendment bill that will be presented to the Senate in mid October.
