22 November 2008
Flaws highlighted in privacy week
31 August 2007
By Stacey Hunt: Te Waha Nui Online
The Privacy Commissioner has released a set of guidelines to help businesses and the Government deal with breaches of privacy – but they are only voluntary.
Announced on Monday, the start of Privacy Awareness Week, the guidelines are designed to assist companies in taking the right steps if the private information they hold should become public.
As lawyer and co-author of The Privacy Act – A guide, Tim McBride asks: “Will guidelines make a difference?”
By introducing voluntary guidelines, New Zealand is taking a different approach to the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries which have made the guidelines mandatory.
Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff said on TVNZ’s ASB Business that she does not want to rush to regulate.
“If it turns out the voluntary guidelines are not sufficiently effective then we will have a look at regulation, either by way of myself regulating or the Government passing a law,” said Shroff.
AUT University lecturer and privacy commentator Felicity Brown says the privacy industry is an area of concern.
“People probably aren’t aware of the rights companies have over information,” says Brown.
The amount of private information New Zealanders are signing away is a concern to McBride.
“Add all the times you give your information away and think of the database that builds up with all the information about what you spend your money on etcetera,” says McBride.
“People are giving their private information away because they get so caught up in taking part in a competition or other such thing that they lose the plot.”
What people do not realise, he says, is that information is a valuable thing: “People make a fortune out of this because it is a valuable commodity.”
Brown says the personal information industry is worth billions of dollars a year.
“Companies are getting cleverer and cleverer at preying on what people want to do,” she says.
An example of this is the recent Sanitarium Weet-Bix All Blacks Face 2 Face challenge. Brown says: “People have an obsession with the self, and therefore promotions like the Weet-Bix challenge are appealing.
It’s playing up to people’s inherent desire to showcase themselves.”
More than 100,000 New Zealanders uploaded pictures via the website and mobile phones for the Weet-Bix competition, according to Close Up on August 23.
Brown says people are not aware of the connection between ticking a box in a competition and being harassed by direct marketing.
“The problem is that the information goes beyond your control.
“You no longer have control over your information, or over the boundaries of public and private life,” says Brown.
