Confidentiality and Privacy
Careful what you attach: How an excel document could cost the Department of Home Affairs millions in data breach damages
29 April 2021
Earlier this year, the Information and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk (Commissioner) made a landmark determination on a data breach by the then Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) that resulted in the sensitive information of 9,258 asylum seekers being made publicly available. The million dollar mistake In February 2014, as was the practice at […]
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Review tampering and mishandling of patient data lands HealthEngine $2.9 million in penalties
8 October 2020
The significant financial penalty incurred by HealthEngine in the Federal Court functions as a timely reminder to businesses that breaches of privacy may lead to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) pursuing enforcement action under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). Recent proceedings in the Federal Court brought by the ACCC revealed that HealthEngine, an […]
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Eva Lu, Associate at Thomson Geer, provides a summary of the privacy and data related recommendations from the ACCC’s Digital Platform Inquiry Preliminary Report. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Preliminary Report on the Digital Platforms Inquiry (Report) contains 11 preliminary recommendations and nine areas for further analysis. Part 1 of this two part […]
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Eva Lu, Associate at Thomson Geer, provides a summary of the privacy and data related recommendations from the ACCC’s Digital Platform Inquiry Preliminary Report. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Preliminary Report on the Digital Platforms Inquiry (Report) contains 11 preliminary recommendations and nine areas for further analysis. Four of those recommendations seek to […]
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Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme Starts 22/2/2018 – Are You Ready?
11 February 2018
Recovering from a major data breach can be difficult, stressful and time consuming for any organisation. It is essential to be well prepared. Organisations need to ensure they have all of the right processes and procedures in place so they can act quickly to minimise the harm, as well as comply with their new legal […]
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Recommended amendments to the Queensland Information Privacy Act
20 October 2017
The Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld) (IP Act) applies to the personal information handling practices of Queensland public sector agencies and their contractors, and contains two sets of privacy principles – the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) that apply to Queensland Health and Queensland’s Hospital and Health Services, and the information Privacy Principles (IPPs) that apply to all […]
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Cases involving social media giants such as Twitter rarely come before the courts, particularly those involving posts by anonymous users, so we were interested to read the decision handed down by Pembroke J last week in X v Twitter Inc [2017] NSWSC 1300. The plaintiff company sought final injunctive orders against Twitter Inc and Twitter International […]
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Drones1 are rapidly becoming a part of everyday life. Revolutionising new methods of data acquisition, their use in agriculture, mining, energy, telecommunications, research, environmental management, news gathering, criminal investigation and cinematography is now widespread. The latest advance in drone technology, that is so appealing, is their use in food aid. In remote and difficult areas […]
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Every year an untold number of organisations are affected by data breaches. These can be accidental or inadvertent (eg leaving an external hard drive of sensitive information on the train), but are more frequently malicious attempts by external parties to obtain sensitive information (eg hacking). From 22 February 2018, organisations affected by an “eligible data […]
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