Notes from the iappANZ, 27 January 2017

G’day from Australia, where a lot of people are still enjoying their summer holidays. There has, however, been a lot of activity among the iappANZ team in finalising our calendar of events for 2017. We’re kicking off the year with a number of Privacy After Hours sessions in Sydney and Melbourne. If you’re local and haven’t yet registered to attend, get in quickly! There are many more great events scheduled in Australia and New Zealand that we’ll be letting you know about very soon.

Here in Oz, one of the biggest topics of conversations around the privacy traps is that of the Full Federal Court’s dismissal of the Privacy Commissioner v. Telstra appeal. This matter concerned requests made in 2013 by an Australian journalist to a large telco for access to the metadata it stored about him in relation to his mobile phone service. A determination made by the Australian Privacy Commissioner in favour of the journalist, subsequently set aside by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The privacy commissioner appealed to this decision to the Full Federal Court, the result of which was recently handed down. Across privacy professionals locally there has been a mix of responses about the decision including an opinion piece by Anna Johnston of Salinger Privacy which I found a particularly good read.

I hope you enjoy this edition of the Digest.