Privacy commissioner seeks better surveillance guidelines

Australia’s privacy commissioner says reforms are needed to ensure law enforcement agencies act proportionately when they access people’s private communications.

The commissioner has joined Australia’s intelligence watchdog, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, in flagging potential adjustments to the surveillance regime to ensure agencies strike the correct balance between protecting consumer privacy and conducting necessary investigations to prevent crimes.

“There is a clear public interest in allowing law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access communications where it is necessary for the prevention of serious and organized crime and threats to Australia’s national security,” the privacy commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, says in a new submission to the Senate. “However, by their very nature such activities will require access to the private communications of individuals. Such accesses should be proportional to the risk they seek to address.”

Pilgrim says current proportionality tests in legislation allowing people’s communications to be intercepted should be re-examined, and government could also consider reducing the number of agencies able to access private telecommunications data. He adds that there is merit in considering changes that would make the current regulatory approaches to handling personal data less fragmented.