The human right to the confidentiality of personal life, its inviolability includes the protection of the right to protect personal data from misuse and dissemination. There is no absolute right to privacy in Australian law, and there is no clearly recognized offence of invasion of privacy or similar remedies available to people who believe their privacy has been breached. However, confidentiality is limited and protected by the common law of Australia and a number of federal, State and territorial laws, as well as administrative mechanisms.
The privacy laws of Australia deals with several different legal acts. In the field of personal data processing, the main current document is the eleven principles developed in the Commonwealth Privacy Act of 1988 (Cavoukian & Chibba, 2018). However, these regulations do not always meet the rapidly changing conditions of the modern world, characterized by international integration and tremendous progress in information technology. On the other hand, there are recommendations for minimizing the processed personal data and their maximum depersonalization, which makes it challenging to identify a specific person and obtain any other information about her life, property, or health.
In the first scenario, several information privacy principles were violated. First, files containing personal information must be stored securely and protected from unauthorized access and disclosure. In this case, Roger, who was left in the photocopy room by the officer, received unregulated access to the worker’s personal information against whom the complaint was filed. Therefore, personal information may be disclosed to another person only if there is consent to the disclosure of personal data. In the first scenario, another principle was also violated, since before viewing the folder with personal information, Roger did not receive consent from either an authorized citizen or an agency employee.
In the second scenario, the principle of disclosure of information without the consent of the party was also violated. Despite the fact that the girl was a partner of the student and may have known certain information about the case, Tom had no right to tell details about hearing the student’s misconduct case without his approval. Furthermore, personal information is collected and used only for legitimate purposes, and in this case, Tom’s actions do not have any legality.
In the third case, the young person violated the principle of confidentiality of information, which states that personal information can be disclosed to another person only if the interested person is aware of it and has given consent. Janet did not give Brad an agreement to access information about where she lived and when her birthday was. This information can only be used for legitimate purposes, not for personal aims, as in the latter scenario.
In all scenarios, it is possible for victims to appeal to the legal authorities. Federal law should provide for the initiation of private lawsuits for invasion of privacy, provided that the rights of citizens are violated. Australian courts should adopt appropriate means, such as injunctions, procedures for dealing with claims of damages, with the principles of protecting personal information. An employer can issue a reprimand or fine to an employee who violates the personal data law at the local level.
The problem currently facing organizations in Australia that process large amounts of data is that data sets from anonymized ones quickly become identifiable. Personal data includes not only the information that accurately identifies you, but also those that can potentially be used for this purpose. In this paper, scenarios where the principles of information security were violated were analyzed. In general, the protection of personal data in Australia is still at risk of dissemination without proper consent, as shown in the cases presented in this work.
Reference
Cavoukian, A., & Chibba, M. (2018). Privacy seals in the USA, Europe, Japan, Canada, India and Australia. In Privacy and data protection seals. TMC Asser Press, The Hague, 28, 59–82.