Two years after Edward Snowden’s allegations concerning mass surveillance, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the UK intelligence agencies complaints tribunal, has ruled that the manner in which the UK’s…
Privacy is often thought of as the right to be left alone. Yet, our lives are embedded in relationships – with people, with corporations, with government, and with technological devices – that can’t be…
We live in a world increasingly dominated by our personal data. Some of those data we choose to reveal, for example, through social media, email and the billions – yes, billions – of messages, photos and…
Just how much information Google should remove from its search results when requested is being tested by the European Union which wants to extend its influence beyond its borders. The European Court of…
When Frances Abbott’s private scholarship award was “exposed”, when poetry professor Barry Spurr was outed for his inflammatory emails and when Senator Nova Peris was devastated by the leaking of her private…
People are more inclined to trust ASIO and the police than the government and communications companies to store personal data, according to a poll published this week. Following the introduction of the…
Metadata, previously a word limited to the tech-savvy, is now not only a hot topic of public discussion but the focus of new national security legislation. The public discussion seems split between two…
Congress has recently stepped up its efforts to reform the copyright system, which is woefully inadequate to deal with today’s rapidly evolving communication technologies. These efforts began early last…
Australians’ love of social media, which includes 11.3 million Facebook users, has been a haven for social networking companies, advertisers, and increasingly journalists. But Fairfax’s recent publication…
Ello is new social networking space on the web that is receiving a lot of attention of late – so much that it’s caused a few problems with the website out of action from time to time. Ello’s new popularity…
Never mind the celebrities; let’s say you and I had naked photos of ourselves (selfie-steams) floating in Apple’s iCloud. If somehow those photos were exposed, we would have little recourse under Australia’s…
Recent reports of celebrities having nude or risqué photos of themselves leaked online highlights the serious risk of hackers getting access to our personal pictures. While many of us take inane and uninteresting…
Peta Brady’s Ugly Mugs, which I saw in Sydney last week, opens with a gurney being wheeled onto the stage – on it, a sex worker who has died at the hands of a client and who, like the phoenix tattooed…
The explosive uptake of mobile devices including smartphones and tablets has us immersed in a complex, volatile soup of hyper-connected digital technologies, where not only is the perception of time being…
On July 15, with the support of all three main parties, the UK parliament passed the data retention and investigatory powers (DRIP) bill. According to home secretary Theresa May, the bill was designed…
The increasing use of drone aircraft in Australia may finally lead to a long overdue change in privacy laws to protect against the use of remote eyes and ears in invasive technologies. The call for tougher…
The May 2014 ruling by the European Court of Justice, dubbed the right to be forgotten, is seen as a precedent for all internet searches in all European Union member states. But the issues this ruling…
Metadata is in the news again with revelations that police in Australia have been getting access to data collected from mobile base stations (cell towers). In the wiretapping world there is a distinction…
The US government has lifted restrictions on the use of high-quality satellite images in a move that will be welcomed by industry but could have serious privacy implications for the man or woman on the…
The revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have altered the way we think about accountability, transparency and the rule of law with regard to both the activities of security agencies and the…