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From the govt. privacy guide
"There are some obvious examples of personal information, such as your name or address. Personal information can also include medical records, bank account details, photos, videos, and even information about what you like, your opinions and where you work - basically, any information where you are reasonably identifiable."

So basically "Bob from NSW" is not personal information if that is all that is stored (as there are many many Bobs in NSW).
"Bob Smith from NSW" may not even be enough.
"Bob Smith of 27 Clearwater Cresent, Watershire, NSW" would be.

A facial photo (as in CCTV) is what I'm guessing the complaint is about.

You can get quite a lot from a camera.
A person getting out of a car would give you, 1) A face, 2) A licence plate

• An apology
• A change to the respondent's practices or procedures
• Staff counselling
• Taking steps to address the matter, for example providing access to personal information, or amending records
• Compensation for financial or non-financial loss
• Other non-financial options, for example a complimentary subscription to a service.
• http://www.privacy.gov.au/complaints/outcomes

Don't get excited about the financial compensation. That is only if you have suffered economic loss and the employee who did it doesn't have to pay a cent.

http://www.caslon.com.au/privacyguide3.htm
http://www.privacy.gov.au/complaints/outcomes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_in_Australian_law

Dual factor encryption, Bitchn Dog and http://www.privacy.gov.au/law/act

Google as a company makes money by giving away information. In order to get that information, we selectively let them collect information on us. Our privacy has value to us, so we want to keep it private. But not trading information is against Google's very nature. They make money by disseminating information.

This is why Google can be so careless as they were with Buzz. You could see that lack of regard reflected in Jim Clark's (Google CIO) comments about Buzz. All that valuable private information won't make money so long as it's locked up. If your intimate details are revealed to the web, you might lose sleep over it but Google can only make money out of it.

This works so long as we trust Google, and mostly they've kept that trust. But in Buzz and with Doubleclick they're skirting close to the edge. They want to see how far they can push us, and that's proving a moving target. But even if they do push us too far, look at Yahoo! Even after the revelation they were ratting out their Chinese users to the Chinese government, many people continue to have a Yahoo email account anyway. The same applies to the recent leaking of Microsoft documents showing they will sell info on you to 'law enforcement' (for a fee), but most people still use Windows.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/technology/07yahoo.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10459676-38.html

Don't trust Privacy Law to protect you. In many countries its a feel-good toothless tiger. Take Australia's. Here's a feel-good FAQ with a feel-good quiz, but what it doesn't mention is that if someone violates your privacy you have no legal recourse. The worst the Privacy Commissioner can do is issue a non-binding finding that has no financial, civil or criminal penalty.

http://www.privacy.gov.au/faq/individuals

There's not a lot our government gets right but here in Oz we have a TFN (same thing as a SSN), private companies cannot request it except for specific tax related purposes and even then you can refuse (the drawback being you pay the highest tax and have to claim it back), the tax department rules are here. In other words a TFN is useless for checking someones credit rating.

Also monopoly deals as seen with Apple/phone_company_X, and Ebay/paypal are illegal.

I was going to mod you down, but I thought education might be better - the Australian government has pretty decent views on privacy. More information is available on the privacy site, but to the best of my knowledge our laws are pretty good for keeping your personal data private.

I suspect you're getting mixed up with the Australian Internet filtering thing, which is a censorship issue, not a privacy issue. AFAIK, under Australian privacy laws, there's no privacy implications in this stupid filter scheme.

There is no scheme, legislation or proposal in Australia or any of its states for a national ID card.

There is no scheme now, but only since the 2007 election. The Howard government proposed a de-facto national ID card. It is now scrapped.
This was definitely at least a proposal, see eg The Office of the (Australian Government) Privacy Commissioner. It got far enough that there was an "Office of the Access Card" set up (since closed down, url of www.accesscard.gov.au no longer active).

You can still have your name@company.com address through their mail servers

Until Google guarantees, in writing, that it will not data mine in any way, ad's or otherwise, or they provide a mechanism all users can use to opt out of all their marketing, gmail cannot be used by companies in most countries with data privacy laws.

Data privacy laws guarantee that private data, including email messages, that a company acquires cannot be used for any purpose other than the original business transaction without warning plus opt out. e.g. Item 2.1(c) in Australia'a national privacy principals. If google does not warn all potential users of this fact in the relevant countries before businesses sign up, and the companies concerned do not do the same, then they are engaged in illegal activity.

If google can't data mine that breaks their business model. Why are they free hosting businesses again?

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Beware deceptive astroturfers.

Unfortunately the laws don't work very well with small companies. I filed a complaint against a Sydney real estate agency who sent multiple unsolicited text messages to my mobile phone. They just ignored my requests to 1. stop and 2. tell me where they got my number from.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will only launch investigations against larger companies (IIRC they need to have an annual turnover >$500K) and they told me as much when I complained. So that leaves a fair bit of room for unscrupulous companies to flaunt the law without fear of reprisal.

Can someone tell me what this has got to do with spam? Isn't this just a case of our privacy being thrown out the window but disguising it within a "spam act"?

Your privacy would not be violated. Perhaps you should read up on some of the deatails of Australian Privacy here http://www.privacy.gov.au/links/index.html

7 days is a bit of a joke.. what this means in reality is that ISP's will now have to store your account name, IP address and logon-logoff times in a db. Sounds to me like law enforcement want more evidence available for either prosecution or spying.

In Australia, most providers use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RADIUS for exactly what you mention. Most providers also keep the information in some form of database for not only their reference, but that of the user as well.

Seven days of logging for a provider using the above methods is nothing. As mentioned, you will find that the large majority already implement such methods so this is nothing new.

Whilst this parent-post is nationalistic trolling at its finest, I feel I must respond to its shiny tinfoil-plating.

Australian Governmental privacy legislation http://www.privacy.gov.au/act/ is amongst the most strigent in the world.

What is at issue here is not privacy, you are ofcourse free to not use this service, but a willingness to divulge information useless to ourselves for Free Stuff(tm).

I am actually pro-transperancy for all levels of government, down to and including citizens. What is most concerning about the current crop of intrusive corporate and governmental systems is not their level of intrusion but their level of oversight. Meaning that with every measure of intrusion there should be an equal and opposite measure of intrusion into the governing system.

Peer review on all social scales if you will.

The concept is very similar to Iain M. Banks' Culture, where the last bastion of privacy is your conscious thought process. (For the sake of simplicity we'll ignore Meatfucker).

People are always willing to surrender personal information for personal gain. Is this really a suprise? If you're really that worried about giving up your invaluable viewing habits maybe you should create some online auction space and atleast extract maximum gain from the process by selling to the highest bidder?

for these reasons alone I love living in a place where if I'm outside it can be hard to be captured by image because of the size of the country.

the closest we have to cctv in melboure was some cameras put up in sept-oct '81 for CHOGM. This of course in under review as the 2006 commonwealth games are being planned.

But getting a shirt and some dacks at a local store on the weekend illustates how insidious observation has become. I picked up a buiness card seeing where was an online ordering option and I happened to notice the terms of condition for entry into the store.

If you refuse to have your bag searched the company reserved the right to use video images to refuse entry into *any* store in the future indefinatly.

• ``For YOUR protection, a video record of you and your establishment is being transmitted and recorded at remote locations. [insert darkglass here on shirt] All criminal acts prosecuted.''

  Steve Mann, Shooting back.

The problem for me is twofold, double standards and unnecessary data collection. Double standards becuase I bet the store owners and company in question would object if I did a steve man on them and put them under surveillance , secondly the potential for abuse or mistakes made using this approach.

In a country where noise is made about *free speach*, *innocence before guilt* and *privacy* I'll make less of a noise when pollies allow visual transmission of 100% of parliamentary procedure and not cut transmission due to parliamentary standing procedure to avoid honourary members falling into disrepute.

Australia has National Privacy Principals which among other things forces companies that gross 3mil plus PA to inform users that data is being colledted and stored and for what purpose. it also must allow a person access to any data that is stored about them.
There is also a bill in parliment that will do more and will have hefty penalties.

I dont know exactly what XP sends to microsoft, other than SN details but the average user trusts MS and for the moeny they pay for a license they should be able to.

Is it just me, or does Australia simply rule? It seems that they make a sensible thing after a sensible thing, seem to be enthusiastic on the Linux front, and generally kick ass? Will Australia be a leading ICT power after a while? US is, well, US and EU seems to be very slow in it's movement.

And as far as spammers go, I wouldn't blink an eye if they were thrown into a pound-me-in-the-ass prison in Siberia. They abuse the "freedom of speech" to make soem easy profit while harrassing general populace, while the freedom of speech that matters is generally not a problem unless you search for such information.