Privacy
3. Privacy Principles
Authors: Staff Legal Eagle
Firm / Chambers:
Last updated: 14 Aug 2015
- Australian privacy law does not grant you a comprehensive ‘right’ to privacy in all areas of your life. It simply regulates the way certain organisations can deal with your personal data.
- Personal data can take the form of either information or an opinion from which a person’s identity can be ascertained. Organisations are under restrictions as to what they can do with this kind of information.
- More stringent thresholds for privacy are applied to personal information that is regarded as sensitive in nature. Sensitive information can include data about an individual’s religion, political persuasion and sexual preferences for example. This sensitive personal information can only be collected by organisations or companies with your individual consent.
- In early 2014 the 13 Australian Privacy Principles were introduced. They apply to private organisations such as companies and Australian government agencies.
- The 13 Australian Privacy Principles are:
- the management of personal information must be open and transparent;
- individuals must have the option of not identifying themselves or using a pseudonym (a false name) unless:
- the organisation or agency is required or authorised under an Australian law or judicial (court or tribunal) order to deal with individuals who have identified themselves; or
- it is impracticable for the organisation or agency to deal with individuals who are not correctly identified;
- the collection of information must be reasonably necessary and be fundamental to the activities of the organisation or agency. Information must be gathered legally and fairly and in most cases it may be collected only after the individual has given their express consent;
- if personal information is provided without being asked for then the organisation or agency must determine whether it could legally have collected that information and if not, the information must be destroyed;
- before collecting personal information the organisation or agency must notify the person of a number of matters including:
- the purpose for which the information is collected;
- the consequences if the information is not collected;
- any other organisation or agency that the information may be disclosed to;
- the privacy policy of the organisation or agency and how a person may access information held about them; and
- that the organisation or agency’s privacy policy contains information on making a complaint about a breach of privacy.
- personal information can only be used or disclosed for its original purpose unless the person has consented to its use or disclosure for another purpose. Some exemptions apply to initial contact for direct marketing and other situations such as when there are issues of law enforcement, public safety or protecting the company from fraud;
- an organisation or agency must provide easy to use opt-out mechanisms where personal information is used for direct marketing;
- in most situations an organisation or agency is only permitted to transfer or disclose personal information to an overseas country if they have the person’s express consent;
- organisations and agencies are prohibited from using a government agency’s identifier as a person’s own identifier. This means that an organisation is not permitted to identify a person by use of that person’s Medicare number, tax file number or any future identity number assigned to that person by a Commonwealth government agency;
- organisations and agencies must ensure that they maintain personal data so that it is complete and accurate;
- organisations and agencies are obliged to ensure that personal information they have collected is kept securely and not misused, disclosed or modified;
- organisations and agencies must permit an individual to access their personal data; and
- organisations and agencies must take reasonable steps to amend information if they are notified that it is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.
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