Privacy Now!

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Thanks to all of those who attended this week’s Burning Platforms Live special briefing on privacy reform.

It was our first live event since the lockdown and it was great to experience the energy of a virtual room. Those who have been on the journey with me know what an advocate I am of Zoom for good!

Special thanks to our panel of Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind, HTI Director Ed Santow and Digital Rights Watch Chair Lizzie O’Shea, with a special appearance from Kate Bower.

The video and podcast are now live.

For those for whom this is "Too Long Can’t Listen" here are my key take outs:

• Privacy reform might be technical but it's really, really important. We haven’t had meaningful reform in 40 years, that’s before the World Wide Web was a thing.
• The first round of reforms from the government are welcome, especially the privacy tort but without systemic reform the measures will be largely performative.
• The real reform challenge is structural, shifting from a compliance regime where tick-a-box consent enables those who collect data to be a law unto themselves, to a care regime where all information must be handled in a ‘fair and reasonable’ manner.
• The onus is now on the government to be clear on the timing and scope of the next wave of reforms and which of the 99 recommendations it is formally agreed to though the Privacy Review will see the light of day.

So what’s next?

The Privacy Now campaign has been officially launched, with an aim of being a hub for information and activity between now and the landing of the reforms on privacy we need. You can sign up to it here and stay in touch with all the latest updates.

 We’ll be back to our regular updates next week.