Digital Rights Watch

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❗ Submissions are due this Friday (11 Oct) in response to the privacy reform bill. There is some good stuff in there, but a lot was left out! ⚡ We've made it as easy as possible for you to have you say - feel free to cut and paste, and edit to suit you https://lnkd.in/gNP2Hk7g 🚨 We need a clear timeline for the changes we desperately need. We urge the government to commit to implementing all the changes it has agreed to within six months of the next election, should it be returned to power. 🤖 Join us in calling on the government to get serious and implement privacy reform now.

Last week, the Attorney General tabled a set of privacy reforms after three years of consultation. The proposed reforms have been described as a “first tranche”, which suggests there is more to come… but what has been included and what is being kicked down the road? To unpack the latest proposed reforms, Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind will be joining this Burning Platforms live event on Wednesday 18 September @ 12pm AEST, alongside Chair of Digital Rights Watch, Lizzie O’Shea, Peter Lewis, and Ed Santow from the Human Technology Institute. Tickets free and available here: https://lnkd.in/dZTbDPxN

Today, the Attorney General tabled a set of privacy reforms. The proposed statutory tort and the plan for a children’s code together represent a good first step. But Australia remains decades behind other nations, there is a lot more to do to catch up. Read our media statement here: https://lnkd.in/gJ55rqTR

Are you signed up to our newsletter? Digital Rights Watch puts together a regular summary of the latest in Australian tech policy, plus an update of what the organisation is up to, and a selection of things to read from around the web: https://lnkd.in/g5KxMGxp

Catch our Chair Lizzie O'Shea at this lunchbox talk in Melbourne on the 28th of August: https://lnkd.in/gkWv-fgD We will explore how legal, ethical and philosophical conceptions of human identity, free will, and civil liberties may need to evolve in this hypothetical "singularity" where human and machine realities fuse. It raises profound questions about retaining individual privacy, cognitive liberty, and democratic rights as the boundaries between person and product, citizen and commodity, blur. Fundamentally, it challenges us to reassess what it means to be human in a world of planetary-scale computing where the virtuality may ultimately subsume the actual. Details below >>>

💁♀️ I had a terrific time speaking last night at #TechPolicyFutures24 with politicians, officials, civil society advocates, industry, innovators, and scholars in Parliament House about designing the technology of tomorrow that we want and need. 🤖 I even ate a 3D printed cheesecake 🎤 A real pleasure to share the podium with: Genevieve Bell, Vice Chancellor of ANU; The Hon Paul Fletcher MP Manager of Opposition Business; Helen Wilson of Department of Industry, Science and Resources; Rosemary Sinclair AM of auDA; Kate Chaney MP; David Shoebridge; Professor Elanor Huntington of CSIRO; Brett Solomon of Access Now; Allegra Spender MP; and Sunita Bose of DIGI.

As Maslow's hammer dictates, when you're the Privacy Commissioner, everything looks like a privacy problem. Much of the Australian news discourse is currently preoccupied with real public concern at harmful developments in online platforms - from misogynistic content and deepnude apps targeted at young men, to scams designed to catch out older internet users - yet rarely is the connection made between the worst features of the online ecosystem and the privacy-invasive business model which enables them. Today alone I read about Andrew Forrest's attempt to bring accountability to Meta's algorithmic amplification of scams (https://lnkd.in/e5sp7f6g), the emergence of deepnude apps being used across Australian schools (https://lnkd.in/eyUcGUSW) and the growing prevalence of 'misogynistic radicalisation' (https://lnkd.in/eHEjs7St). Yes, we need better education for young people and parents and older people in the critical consumption of online content. But we also need stronger privacy laws, robust enforcement of existing ones, and global collaboration and leadership to tackle the cross-jurisdictional and ecosystem-level harms of the data economy. As Lizzie O'Shea and Samantha Floreani argued in this excellent op ed from April 2024, "The underlying business model is rotten, and that ought to be the focus of our attention." https://lnkd.in/eumgriCY

Did you catch our Head of Policy Samantha Floreani on ABC 7:30 on Monday night? She joined the show to warn of some of the privacy, digital security and implementation challenges of age verification as part of proposals to attempt to ban children and young people from social media. You can watch it back here: https://lnkd.in/d_CuhAYR

Australians are sitting with anticipation awaiting August 2024, when the Commonwealth Government promised to deliver a draft bill to update the Privacy Act. But there’s another bill that’s poised to outshine the Commonwealth’s and champion state privacy rights… Western Australia tabled a bill earlier this month, checkout this blog I wrote for Digital Rights Watch where we unpack what we love, are less keen on, and what we think the WA government needs to do more thinking on. #privacy #westernaustralia