Of course, certainly, we keep your personal information safe from prying eyes!

Anyone who is certain that all information a state/federal government department/agency or civil corporation holds about their social, financial, genealogical or health status is strictly protected from prying eyes needs to seriously question why they appear to hold that unsafe assumption.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 2017:

More than 700 public patients have had their privacy breached and potential delays in their follow up care after more than 1600 medical letters were found dumped in a Sydney bin.

NSW Health is investigating the incident involving a sub-contractor for a company tasked with transcribing medical letters sent from specialists to general practitioners.

On Tuesday, April 11, a man found piles of follow-up letters containing patient details stuffed into a garbage bin at an apartment block in Ashfield. It is understood there were more than 1600 documents in total. Some of the letters were duplicates. 

The man called in his neighbour, a female health worker, who recognised the documents were out-patient letters and contacted Ashfield police. 

A sub-contractor for Global Transcription Services (GTS) was supposed to take the letters home to post but instead stuffed them into the bin. The young woman had been dealing with personal upheaval and health issues, Health Minister Brad Hazzard said on Thursday, adding it was inappropriate to comment further.

The letters related to 768 public hospital patients from Royal North Shore, Gosford Hospital outpatients and Cancer Centre and Dubbo Hospital Cancer Centre.

There were also 700 letters relating to patients from six private providers: Chris O'Brien Lifehouse, providing services to Dubbo Cancer Clinic, Northern Cancer Institute (Frenchs Forest and St Leonards), Sharp Neurology, Southside Cancer Care Centre, Strathfield Retina Clinic and the Woolcock Institute.

Newcastle Herald, 17 April 2017:

The NSW privacy commissioner has called for a thorough investigation after thousands of photo ID cards, including gun licences, were mistakenly sent to the wrong people in a "significant" security breach.

A total of 2693 cards were sent to the wrong people earlier this month.

Among the documents mailed out were 2000 driver's licences, 104 firearm licences, 318 permits to use disabled parking, 242 proof of age cards, 26 security licences and 3 commercial and private investigator licences.

It is understood people affected went to Service NSW to apply for their licence on April 5, with the licences printed at the agency's card operations centre on April 7.

The error was discovered four days later. Service NSW informed police, Roads and Maritime Services and the privacy commissioner.

Shortly afterwards, gun shops were contacted by police and told to be "extra vigilant" in checking licences until all licences sent to the wrong address were retrieved, News Corp reported.

Those affected have been advised to "be alert to activities that may indicate their identity is being misused by others".

Acting NSW Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Coombs said the breach was significant as it involves the identity of members of the public.

"These cards contain personal information that can identify individuals. Health information, which is even more sensitive, appears to have also been affected (eg on disability status)," Dr Coombs said.

"This breach is of particular concern as it occurs at a time when the NSW Government is increasing its digital interaction and service provision with the NSW community.

Education HQ Australia, 12 April 2017:

The traumatic, sensitive details of a Victorian mother's life lingered online for days after the education department thought it had dealt with a privacy breach.

The woman was one of 120 people affected when the Victorian education department inadvertently published personal details of parents online after receiving 558 submissions on proposed new regulations for state education.

The department thought it had taken the documents offline, but they were still publicly available five days after the breach, with several still listed on Google's search engine on Wednesday afternoon.

The Australian, 7 April 2017:

A Senate committee which investigated secret Defence training that teaches soldiers how to deal with being taken prisoners of war accidentally disclosed the confidential evidence of witnesses to each other.

On March 7, the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade references committee took evidence from witnesses in-camera, which means it wasn't a public hearing, as part of an inquiry into training procedures for resistance to interrogation and conduct after capture.

Witnesses were posted copies of their transcripts to check over by registered mail, but the committee accidentally sent witnesses all transcripts rather than just individual ones.

Crickey.com.au, 4 April 2017:

Qantas customers’ personal data has been compromised after a data breach revealed the names, seat numbers and frequent flyer numbers of eight passengers to another passenger looking at the Qantas check-in app on Thursday. The app, which was used to check in for a flight between Newman, Western Australia, and Perth, showed the length of the flight and that a snack or brunch would be available, but the Qantas passenger was shocked to be able to see details for other passengers…..

It is not the first time Qantas customer details have been shared with others. In January, an email sent to customers flying out of Melbourne warned of traffic delays on the Tullamarine Freeway included surnames and booking references of other passengers

The Age, 26 March 2017:

A hospital is being investigated for breaching the privacy of dozens of patients after medical records revealing a "swollen penis" and mental illnesses among other things, were found in a Coburg street.

The Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim is investigating how the records of 31 patients were removed from the John Fawkner Private Hospital in Melbourne's north last month.

'LB' and Comcare (Privacy) [2017] AICmr 28 (24 March 2017):

Determination

1. I find that the respondent, Comcare, interfered with the complainant’s privacy in breach of Part III of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) by:

a. disclosing the complainant’s personal information, including sensitive health information on a publicly available website contrary to Information Privacy Principle (IPP) 11; and

b. failing to take such security safeguards as it is reasonable in the circumstances to take, against loss, against unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure, and against other misuse contrary to IPP 4.

'KA' and Commonwealth Bank of Australia Limited [2016] AICmr 80 (25 November 2016):

Findings

1. Commonwealth Bank of Australia Limited (the CBA) interfered with the complainant’s privacy by:

* disclosing her personal information to the principal of a Commonwealth Bank Mortgage Innovation agency (MIA) for a purpose other than the primary purpose of collection, in breach of National Privacy Principle (NPP) 2.1 of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act), and

* failing to take reasonable steps under NPP 4.1 to protect her personal information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Every man and his dog may soon have access to your personal medical history if you live in Australia

A federal government digital medical information storage and retrieval system, which will eventually contain information on every person permanently residing in Australia and which was hacked even before it publicly went online, is now going national – and it still has significant privacy problems.

The Daily Telegraph, 10 April 2017:

THE private health records of Australians can be accessed by more than half a million people under the latest bungle with the $2.2 billion electronic My Health Record.

News Corp Australia has learned that the privacy settings on the government’s computerised My Health Record, which lists every medicine a patient takes and records every medical visit and procedure, are automatically set on “universal access”.

This means every registered health practitioner in the nation — 650,000 people — can view them, not just the family GP, unless the patient specifically requested to opt out.

Occupational therapists working for an employer, doctors working for insurance companies, a dietitian, an optometrist or a dentist or their staff can view the record and see if individuals have a sexually transmitted disease, a mental illness, have had an abortion or is using Viagra.

“Potentially your employer’s occupational therapist can look at your record and get information they really shouldn’t be getting access to, its confidential data,” says former AMA president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal who was a government consultant on the My Health Record.

The bungle came about because the record was originally set up as an opt in system and when people set up their record they were given the option to set a PIN number to protect the information and determine who got to see it.

Nearly four million people set up a My Health Record under the opt in system but doctors weren’t using it because four years after it was established 83 per cent of Australians still did not have one.

Last year the Turnbull Government trialled turning the failed record into an opt out system.

One million people in the Nepean Blue Mountains area of NSW and Northern Queensland were given a record unless they opted out.

News Corp has now learned only 147 of these one million Australians automatically given a record under the trial set up a PIN number to protect their health information.

“147 My Health Records created in the trials have access controls set to restrict which healthcare providers can see the record, or have controls restricting access to certain documents in the record,” the Department said.

“This equates to 0.0151 per cent of My Health Records automatically created in the trials. This is consistent with the rates of access controls set by those who have opted to register for a My Health Record,” a spokeswoman for the department said.

The My Health Record lists a person’s medications and allergies, doctors can upload a health summary about the person’s health problems, eventually the system will include X-ray results, pathology results, hospital discharge summaries and other data that for the first time can be shared between medical practitioners.

The privacy problem is about to affect everyone because two weeks ago state and federal health ministers agreed to give every Australian a My Health Record unless they opt out.

This decision was made even though the results of the original opt out trial have never been made public.

And it means the health records of every Australian will soon be on open access.

The Australian, 27 March 2017:

Companies bidding for the Medicare digital payments system have been given the option of proposing a new identity card to protect against fraud and improve system capabilities.

As the federal government pushes ahead with electronic health records, in anticipation of a digital health revolution, The Australian has learned the Department of Health has made identity management a key part of the new payments system and left it open to companies to propose alter­natives.

Companies may suggest alternatives to the green Medicare card — which holds no data, just a magnetic strip and numbers for indiv­iduals whose information is stored in a database — and forms of identity for veterans’ affairs, aged care and related payments.

It would be the biggest shift since the Howard government proposed the Australian Access Card, a broad-function smartcard that attracted privacy concerns and comparisons to the ill-fated Australia Card of the 1980s and was dumped by the incoming Rudd government.

A departmental spokeswoman emphasised that there was no proposal for a new identity card under moves to develop a new digital payments system.

“While the Depart­ment of Health has not been prescriptive, the presumption is that the Medicare card and number will continue to be the basis for identification,” she said.

The option for a new identity management solution came after health ministers decided on Friday that the My Health Rec­ord system would be opt-out, making electronic medical records compulsory for all Australians unless they said otherwise, despite trials of that model having yet to report.

Australian Doctor, 27 March 2017:

Australian health ministers have officially agreed to a national opt-out model under which every patient will have a MyHealth Record created for them by default.

Yet precisely when the model will be rolled out remains to be seen.

Federal, state and territory health ministers met in Melbourne on Friday, where, according to a communique, they agreed "to a national opt-out model for long-term participation arrangements" in the My Health Record system.

The agreement precedes the release of findings from two pilot trials of opt-out enrolment systems, in North Queensland and NSW's Blue Mountains, which included nearly one million patients.

A little history…….

News.com.au, 11 September 2016:

THE man who led the dumped UK digital health record system has been put in charge of Australia’s bungled $1 billion e-health record and is being paid as much as the Prime Minister to fix it.

Former journalist Tim Kelsey will be paid a total remuneration package worth $522,240 a year, almost the same as Malcolm Turnbull and just shy of the $548,360 paid to the Chief of the Navy and more than the Chief Scientist, the head of the Fair Work Commission and the Inspector General of Taxation, a remuneration tribunal determination reveals.

The former NHS executive is an interesting appointment as CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency because he was in charge of the UK digital health records scheme Care.data dumped by the UK’s National Health System in July.

The Department of Health stated that Mr Kelsey is uniquely suited to the role because of his experience with data and digital platforms in health and personal privacy.

The Care.data scheme to store patients’ medical information in a single database suffered multiple delays and was then scrapped after major problems emerged over patient confidentiality.

It was similar to Australia’s My Health Record that Mr Kelsey will now oversee.

Was there really a typical Australian in 2016? The Australian Bureau of Statistics thinks so

This month the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its first taste of data from the 2016 national census and rather bravely decided it should be a profile of The ‘Typical’ Australian.

I’m just wondering how reliable this profile is, given the number of people who either stated an intention to or admitted on social media platforms that they falsified some or all of the information they entered on the compulsory census form as a privacy safeguard against personal information data retention and the creation of longitudinal data every Australian.

As the exact number of deliberately falsified forms cannot be known this casts some doubt on census data available to statisticians.

Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census 2016, 11 April 2017:

     ______________________________________________________

The 'Typical' Australian Median Age 38 Sex (Mode) Female Country of Birth of Person (Mode) Australia Country of Birth of Parents (Mode) Both parents born in Australia Language Spoken at Home (Mode) English Ancestry 1st Response (Mode) English Social Marital Status (Mode) Married in a registered marriage Family Composition (Mode) Couple family with children Count of All Children in Family (Mode) Two children in family Highest Year of School Completed (Mode) Year 12 or equivalent Unpaid Domestic Work: Number of Hours (Mode) 5 to 14 hours Number of Motor Vehicles (Mode) Two vehicles Number of Bedrooms in Private Dwelling (Mode) Three bedrooms Tenure Type (Dwelling Count) (Mode) Owned with a mortgage Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people Median Age 23 Sex (Mode) Female Persons born overseas Median Age 44 Sex (Mode) Female Country of Birth of Person (Mode) England Language Spoken at Home (Mode) English Note: * The mode is the most commonly occurring value in a distribution. * Statements of typical age in this release are median values. The median is the middle value  in distribution when the values are arranged in ascending or descending order. * The most common response for each data item is calculated independently. For example, if  the 'typical' person is male and the 'typical' person does 5-14 hours of unpaid domestic work per  week, this does not imply that the 'typical' male does 5-14 hours of unpaid domestic work per week. * No detailed Census data will be issued with this information. Datasets for the above characteristics  will be released as part of the main release of 2016 Census data on Tuesday, 27 June 2017.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 April 2017:

The census preview showed that NSW has become more culturally diverse over the past decade.

The typical person in the state now has at least one parent born overseas. In 2006 and 2011, the typical person in NSW had both parents born in Australia. This change also suggests NSW is more culturally diverse than the rest of the nation – the "typical Australian" still has both parents born in Australia.

It's a diversity well masked by averages.

"In my social circles, yes, I guess I'd say I feel very typical but my work is a completely different place," Mrs Purvis says.

"Most of the people I work with speak another language. Their parents weren't born in Australia. A lot of them are younger people who don't have children … and are either still living at home with their parents or renting."

The preview also highlighted the shifting ancestry of the state's migrants. In 2016, the state's typical migrant was a Chinese-born female, aged 44. A decade ago, the typical migrant in NSW was a 45-year-old female born in England.

The state's typical Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person was a female aged 22.

No Australia Card? Yes, Assistant Minister. Of course you are 100% believable

Hoping against hope I don’t have to eventually file this one under “How can you tell when Government is lying".

However, I suspect that the Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation is actually lying like the proverbial trooper, given the bare bones of the federated identity service and its attendent privacy & safety risks are on display at the Digital Transformation Agency.

The Register, 19 March 2017:

Australia's federal government is sticking with its plans for a federated identity service, but disruption minister Angus Taylor has moved to quell fears of a revived “Australia Card”*.

What first emerged last year looking like a “single identity” for all citizens across all Australian governments – before being dumped – isn't coming back.

Speaking at the Teach Leaders conference in the Blue Mountains on Sunday, Taylor – full title Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation – said the Digital Transformation Agency's (DTA's) identity project is now about setting standards rather than creating a single whole-of-government identity provider.

He also said the government considers it a citizen's right to have multiple digital identities for their interactions with government, if that's what they want.

Considering that last year, the then-DTA was trying to recruit state governments to its “federated identity” alpha (only getting the NSW government's support), the new direction looks like a considerable departure from the project's original ambitions.

Taylor said: “We don't see ourselves as creating a centralised solution that we'll roll out and everybody else has to come and play – that's not the answer. But we do need to agree on standards, and we do need to agree on principles as to how this will work.”

He also emphasised that the system had to be user-driven rather than top-down, and that citizens' consent is crucial to the model.

“I must be user-driven. If I want to have 45 identities across the Internet and across my applications, it should be my choice. If I want to have one, that's my choice too.”

He added that the “user-driven approach” has to extend to the citizen having a “genuine consent” about how they interact with a digital identity.

“That, to me, is essential to any solution, and the federal government won't endorse or be part of any solution that doesn't do exactly that.”

A formal announcement about the future of the federated identity project is coming “in the very, very near future.”......

*Comment: For readers unfamiliar with 1980s Australian politics – the “Australia Card” was proposed as a single ID for citizens in 1985.

Offered as an efficiency measure, it landed when “ID cards” in Nazi Germany and the Eastern Bloc were still fresh in many citizens' minds, especially for those who had arrived in Australia's first inrush of non-British immigration.

The uproar killed off the Australia Card after a two-year political battle, but not the concept: public service managers have never lost their love of tracking and identifying citizens.

From that point of view, Paul Shetler's DTO nearly achieved a huge social change by disguising it as “technological disruption”.

Australia Card Mark 3: Surprise! Without justification we will be collecting biometric data to create one centralised identity for each and every one of you and we will be retaining your metadata for an indefinite period at our discretion

The Turnbull Government received the Commonwealth Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) preliminary report, Initial Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for the Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF) Alpha, in December 2016.

The origin of this particular digital identity proposal was a recommendation by the Financial System Inquiry set up by then Treasurer Joe Hockey in December 2015, with an inquiry committee dominated by representatives of banks and the financial services sector.

This preliminary Privacy Impact Assessment is the latest step in establishing a single digital identity for each and every Australian citizen, with all the same privacy and security risks as the formerly proposed Australia Card and Access Card.

It is proposed that an individual’s digital identity information will initially be made available to federal government departments/agencies and later to state government departments/agencies that apply to join the TDIF.

As yet there is no underlying legal authority for the Trusted Digital Identity Framework, much of the security arrangements for this framework are apparently not yet developed and a full independent risk assessment has either not been completed to date or is not publicly available.

Cross-border data transfers of personal information held on Australian citizens may occur under this framework.

It is expected that complaints and correction requests may cause some difficulties in the TDIF because multiple participants may each hold part of the relevant data and responsibility for dealing with complaints and corrections may be difficult to determine.

On 24 March 2017 The Canberra Times reported:

The federal government is experimenting with a system that would allow Australians to use selfies to log onto Centrelink, Medicare and other Commonwealth services.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's digital re-invention agency is designing a system that would use "bio-metric" facial recognition technology to allow easy log-ins while protecting accounts from identity thieves.

The Digital Transformation Agency insists that no collection or data base of images would be built, the system would be voluntary and the strictest privacy safeguards would be in place.

But privacy activists are worried the idea is simply a high-tech version of the unpopular "Australia card" plan, resurrected more than 20 years after the national ID scheme was dumped.

The government is determined to improve to access to its services online, to save time and money, and to step-up the automation of many of its core activities, particularly in the expensive health and welfare sectors.

But security and privacy has been a huge issues, with many of the problems associated with the much-maligned myGov portal put down to the complex and glitch-prone log-in protocols……

A user of the proposed new system, after establishing their account, would log-in by scanning their traditional forms of ID and as a fail-safe against hacker and identity thieves, take a selfie and upload it from their mobile, tablet or computer.

Central [to] the architecture of the scheme would be an online "identity exchange", a portal that would confirm to a government agency, Centrelink for example, that a user's identity had been verified and cleared to use their account but would not supply the photo or any other data used to make the confirmation.

But talks with "stakeholders" including state and federal privacy authorities as well as online privacy campaigners, have begun to reveal the full complexity of the privacy problems facing the TDIF.

Many of those consulted were surprised they had not already heard of such a game-changing project  and questioned the motivation for the decision.

"Stakeholders queried whether due consideration had been given to the failure of previous centralised models in the Commonwealth identity field, such as the Australia Card and the Access Card," Galexia reported.

There were worries that various parts of the system "would obtain, over time, a large and rich source of personal data that will be attractive to third parties for surveillance...or subject to external attack (e.g. hackers), and  or subject to accidental breach."

"The consequences of surveillance or a breach were likely to be significant," Galexia noted.

""Some stakeholders predicted that, over time, each [agency] would collect biometric information (photographs) and contribute to the development of a national data set of photographs.

"Although there is no intention to retain photographs in the TDIF, and they are destroyed as soon as a verified match has been made, stakeholders believed that 'it was only a matter of time' before the system was changed and photographs were retained and shared."

A prototype of the TDIF system is expected to be ready for testing in mid-2017….

Key stakeholders consulted sometime in October-November by Galexia Pty Ltd for its 5 December 2016 report:

Australia Post

Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN)

Australian Privacy Foundation (APF)

Commissioner for Privacy and Data Protection Victoria (CPDP)

Department of Finance, Services and Innovation NSW (DFSI)

Digital Rights Watch           

Information and Privacy Commission NSW (IPC)

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)

Office of the Information Commissioner QLD (OIC)

Queensland Government Chief Information Office (QGCIO)

Queensland SmartService (Digital Productivity and Services Division)

Service NSW

According to Galexia on Page 27 of its report:

In the consultation conducted for this PIA, the following views were expressed on this issue:

* Stakeholders questioned where the decision had ‘come from’ as it appeared to take nearly all stakeholders by surprise;

* Stakeholders queried the link between the decision to establish a single Commonwealth IdP and the recommendations of the Murray Report (which in part endorses the development of multiple IdPs in order to foster competition, choice and innovation);

* Stakeholders queried whether due consideration had been given to the failure of previous centralised models in the Commonwealth identity field, such as the Australia Card and the Access Card. Although stakeholders recognised some differences between those proposals and the TDIF in relation to the overall framework and the Identity Exchange, they viewed the decision to establish a single Commonwealth IdP as a ‘throwback’ to those earlier proposals. Even after detailed discussions and explanation on the details of the TDIF most stakeholders still viewed the single Commonwealth IdP as an updated version of the Australia Card / Access Card;

* Stakeholders were strongly of the view that such an important and far-reaching decision should have been the subject of extensive community consultation and debate, with many stakeholders calling for a public discussion paper and / or legislation; and

* Almost all stakeholders struggled to see any justification for the establishment of a single IdP – a common question was “what is the problem that needs to be solved?”.

The real reason the Turnbull Government is seeking to intimidate Centrelink clients who speak out?

North Coast Voices readers may have noticed mainstream and social media debating the ethics of Turnbull Government Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge, and a department in his portfolio releasing personal and perhaps sensitive protected information about a Centrelink client to journalists.

Readers may also have noticed that in Senate estimates last week Secretary of the Department of Human Services, Kathryn Campbell, told the Community Affairs Reference Committee that Centrelink undertook surveillance of social media to identify clients critical of its policies, procedures or specific actions and reported them to the minister.

One doesn't have to look hard for a likely reason why this was such an easy admission to make at a Senate hearing being covered by the media.

It could only have a chilling effect on sometimes already stressed individuals who have been victims of the flawed Centrelink automated debt recovery system, so that they would think twice about coming forward as witnesses during the current Senate inquiry into this same system.

Snapshots from the Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee media release:

Click on image to enlarge

#NotMyDebt: it has spite writ large all over it

Despite any current or future ministerial or departmental denials, ‘explanations’ or excuses, I find it hard to believe that this 22 February 2017 end of business day release of a Centrelink client’s personal, sensitive, protected information to a journalist was accidental.

Particularly as this act was clearly repeated.

It has spite writ large all over it.

The Guardian, 2 March 2017:

The office of human services minister, Alan Tudge, mistakenly sent a journalist internal departmental briefings about a welfare recipient’s personal circumstances, which included additional detail on her relationship and tax history.

Senior departmental figures were grilled at Senate estimates on Thursday about the release of welfare recipient Andie Fox’s personal information last month.

Fox had written an opinion piece critical of Centrelink and its handling of her debt, which ran in Fairfax Media in February. The government released her personal details to Fairfax journalist Paul Malone, who subsequently published a piece attacking Fox and questioning the veracity of her claims.

Two responses were given to the journalist, one from the department of human services and the other from Tudge.

The department said its response – three dot points containing only minimal detail on Fox’s personal history – was cleared by lawyers and was lawful. The minister’s office then added two quotes from Tudge and sent its own response to Malone.

Guardian Australia can now reveal that the minister’s office also accidentally sent the journalist two internal briefing documents, marked “for official use only”, which had been prepared by the department.

Those documents contained additional information on Fox and her personal circumstances, which went beyond the dot points prepared by the department. They included further detail of her relationship history, including when she separated from her partner.

Those documents were then sent to Malone. The documents were also mistakenly sent to Guardian Australia when it raised questions about the disclosure of Fox’s personal information.

No mention of those documents was made in Senate estimates on Thursday, despite repeated questioning of what the minister had disclosed to Malone. Tudge’s office has now conceded the documents were sent to Malone in error. But the office says it was of no consequence, because all of their contents had been legally cleared by the department.

A welfare recipient’s personal details are considered protected information under social security law, and any unlawful disclosure is considered a criminal offence. Earlier, the department told estimates that social security law only allowed it to disclose the minimal amount of information needed to correct the public record. [my highlighting]

On 2 March 2017 Labor MP for Barton and Shadow Minister for Human Services, Linda Burney, wrote to the Australian Federal Police Commissioner requesting an investigation into the personal/sensitive information release by the minister and/or his staff:

Letter to Australian Federal Police Commissioner from Shadow Minister for Human Services Linda Burney MP by clarencegirl on Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/document/340678789/Letter-to-Australian-Federal-Police-Commissioner-from-Shadow-Minister-for-Human-Services-Linda-Burney-MP

BACKGROUND

DHS & Centrelink now threatening clients who expose unfair or inappropriate implementation of social security policy?

Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs’ Inquiry into Design, scope, cost-benefit analysis, contracts awarded and implementation associated with the Better Management of the Social Welfare System initiative

http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/search?q=centrelink

SocialSecurity (Administration) Act 1999 - Sect 202

Protection of personal information

Excerpt from Department of Human Services Privacy Policy:

Our obligations under the Privacy Act 

This policy sets out how we comply with our obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles which are set out in a Schedule to that Act. 

The Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) regulate how the department, as an APP entity, must collect, use, disclose and store personal information. The APP

What personal information and sensitive information is

The terms 'personal information' and ‘sensitive information’ come from section 6 of the Privacy Act.

References to personal information throughout the Privacy Policy include sensitive information unless otherwise indicated.

‘Personal information’ means: 

Information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:

a) whether the information or opinion is true or not; and 

b) whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.

‘Sensitive information’ means: 

a) information or an opinion about an individual’s:

i. racial or ethnic origin

ii. political opinions

iii. membership of a political association

iv. religious beliefs or affiliations v. philosophical beliefs

vi. membership of a professional or trade association

vii. membership of a trade union

viii. sexual orientation or practices

ix. criminal record. 

b) health information about an individual

c) genetic information about an individual that is not otherwise health information

d) biometric information that is to be used for the purpose of automated biometric verification or biometric identification e) biometric templates

Sky News, 2 March 2017:

It was also confirmed Centrelink staff trawl social media for complaints about the welfare agency and may refer serious gripes to the responsible minister.

Senior bureaucrats responsible for Centrelink say their workers sift through print, broadcast and social media for individual complaints.

Deciding on whether to report grievances to the human services minister depended on the circumstances of each case.