Privacy New South Wales yesterday issued a statement that indicates that state road transit agencies participating in the national database project may have privacy obligations that conflict with Austroad's plan.
Austroad is a non-profit government-funded group, contracted by the National Road Transport Commission to oversee the NEVDIS project
Conceived by the National Road Transport Commission in 1995, NEVDIS was designed to close opportunities for criminal abuse of information gaps between vehicles and driver licence registers segregated among Australian states.
Austroads has never concealed its goal to make NEVDIS a tool for commercial entities to detect fraud.
NEVDIS administrator Terry Moore said Friday that providing commercial access to the database is one of the critical success factors on which the project was founded.
However, Austroads and the NSW privacy watchdog appear to have conflicting views on who vetos commercial use of the database.
Privacy NSW today indicated that commercial use of the database would breach privacy laws governing the use of information stored in NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) databases.
The conflict has, in part, been brought to the fore by the case of Baycorp Advantage.
Baycorp recently claimed that it would gain access to NEVDIS to cross reference information held in its FraudCheck database once a few small privacy details were ironed out of its application.
Privacy NSW has questioned the accuracy of Baycorp's claim, but believes that the RTA, in its capacity as the NSW representative of the national body controlling NEVDIS, would reject the company's request.
According to the NSW deputy pivacy commissioner, Anna Johnston, under the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998, the RTA is only permitted to disclose information about drivers to other bodies in special circumstances, such as for law enforcement.
If the RTA did approve Baycorp's application it would need to satisfy NSW privacy regulators that drivers and vehicle owners have been made aware that their information might be disclosed to other bodies.
Moore said that Baycorp has been advised on the right way to go about getting permission to use NEVDIS, ut he was unaware of the application's current progress.
However, according to Moore the decision to grant or block access to NEVDIS does not lie in the RTA's hands.
"To date no-one has been given approval for commercial access," said Moore."That's not to say that it won't happen in the future, it's owned by Austroads and it's up to them to make that decision."
Moore conceded that a certain amount of confusion exists about which body owns the database.
"Some of that confusion occurs because the NEVDIS administration is located in the RTA [offices]" he said. "But that's only an administrative convenience."
So far privacy advocates are remaining cautious about commenting on Austroads' goals. However, one group has expressed concerns about the use of compulsory public licensing records by private industry.
Nigel Waters, convenor of the Australian Privacy Charter Council, believes there should be more public consultation over the decision.
"No-one's sat down and said that that's a legitimate purpose that individuals are happy about," said Waters. "If people want to make the case for that then fine, lets sit down and have a debate, but it shouldn't happen by default."
Any debate on the matter would be very timely. The Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner (OFPC) has recently called for submissions on the use of public records by private enterprise.
Bernard Silva, spokesperson for OFPC, said its compliance officers are satisfied that both Baycorp and Austroads have met their obligations under national privacy principles. However, as a complaints body, Silva did not rule out the possibility that OFPC might be called to participate in public debate on the decision in the future.
ZDNet Australia contacted the NSW RTA for comment about the database but so far the agency has not returned calls.
