Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

And location. That is already the law. It is important for fighting crime and it is subject to strong legal safeguards.

I do not want to pre-empt where the committee's recommendations might fall—and I noted that Senator Ludlam was monitoring the proceedings last Friday and I hope he will continue to do so because it is important that people think very carefully about what is going on. But for me the issue is how developments in technology mean that it is so much harder for individuals to take steps to protect their own privacy—and I come back to the issue of personal responsibility.

Technology features everywhere in our lives now. There is satnav in our cars, pay TV, BPAY, eBay, e-tags—it is everywhere. We do our best to protect our privacy and that of our families, almost without thinking about it. We change our passwords regularly—don't we? We cover our pin at the ATM. We store our personal information safely. We have passwords on our phones, computers and blogs. Thankfully, simple actions are usually enough and serious invasions of privacy are infrequent.

Technology has fundamentally changed the way we work, how we bank, how we shop, how we engage with government and the way we relate to friends, family and of course people we have never even met—or never will meet. New technology provides new opportunities, but it also provides us with many, many new challenges—one of which is whether the laws relating to privacy have kept pace with these changes.

Senator Ludlam just showed me his phone. Smartphones allow us to take and instantly share photographs—without the knowledge or consent of the subject, by the way. We have seen examples of how a private email or a thoughtless tweet has been forwarded to thousands of people around the world—and this week, of course, unfortunately, we saw that YouTube video going viral. Facebook sites can be hacked and personal details can be mined. Cloud computing offers great potential but its security must be assured. The high-profile privacy breaches reported in the media are often a result of new and emerging technological capabilities.

Every day, technology is becoming more affordable and more accessible. Australia has one of the highest rates of mobile phone ownership in the world. Around a third of children between the ages of five and 14 have access to their own mobile phone, which is an incredible statistic. We are enamoured of the new and improved features on our mobile phones, and their unobtrusiveness and prevalence mean that it is possible for people to be photographed or recorded, without their knowledge, almost anywhere. We are connected to the internet at home and at work. At the end of 2010 there were more than 10 million internet connections and unknown numbers of people at the end of those connections. We are demanding faster internet connections for increased delivery of health, education, and government services online, so the take-up speeds are extraordinary.

Last week in the hearing of the intelligence and security committee we heard evidence of exponential growth in data downloads predicted in the new few years. I note that the Australian Privacy Foundation has suggested that the government has failed to tell people how much of their personal information is being collected and therefore has created a honeypot of data that is open to potential abuse. I have to say that the government is very alert to these concerns, and I would argue that the government is the most attentive player in meeting its obligations to protect the privacy of its citizens.

Senator Bilyk has talked about the reforms to the Privacy Commission, but I just want to remind people that the pervasiveness of digital technologies has made the landscape for the preservation of individuals' privacy more complicated. If any of you were to open your wallet, I know what you would have. You would probably have a flybuys card, frequent flyers card, store loyalty cards and stored value cards. You need to know that you are sharing information that you might not be aware of in terms of valuable information about your shopping habits. Woolworths has 6.5 million reward card members swiping their cards regularly. Coles has about five million. Consumer cards are a way of linking personal information with shopping behaviour, and the datasets are incredibly rich.

I want to conclude where I began, with the abhorrent behaviour we witnessed in Sydney on the weekend. The main perpetrators have been identified and arrested for inciting violence and damaging vehicles, and they were identified through widely available technologies: the face recognition capabilities of Facebook; the interception and tracing of text messages, Twitter and instant messaging; and footage from closed-circuit cameras in Sydney's CBD. Frankly, I am glad they were. I would rather it be that way—that people are made accountable for their actions. But governments of all persuasions—and potentially, one day, as Senator Ludlam suggested, perhaps even a Greens government—have an obligation to protect the rights of citizens and to ensure that any legislation balances personal rights and responsibilities. 'Proportionality' is the word that Senator Wright used. This debate does not allow me time to talk about the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, but privacy is critical to that committee too. (Time expired)