The Pirate Party urges caution following the announcement by the Attorney-General, Senator George Brandis, that retrospective legislation will be introduced to criminalise the re-identification of de-identified government data. The threat of retrospective legislation may be a ploy to silence critics of the government for discussing flaws in government-published datasets without due process. Consequently, this may prevent anyone bringing security flaws in government practices to attention — including the attention of the Government.
In a media release issued on Wednesday afternoon[1] the Attorney-General announced his intention to introduce new laws aimed at protecting data published by the Government. These changes appear to completely miss their mark, and may in fact criminalise the inspection of datasets for flaws and faults. The broad terms of the proposal could easily implicate any researchers in the field of data anonymity — anyone whose research involves examining datasets for potential privacy flaws.
In addition, enforcement of the legislation would be virtually impossible outside Australia, meaning that only those in Australia would be affected. Further, its retroactive effect means that anyone currently examining government datasets may find themselves being prosecuted in the near future. The vague words of the Attorney-General’s media release do not indicate that these proposals are the product of either discussions in Parliament or consultations with the public.
The Pirate Party recently slammed the Government’s ‘consistently cavalier’ approach to privacy in a submission to the Senate Economics References Committee inquiry into the 2016 Census[2]. The announcement by the Attorney-General that ‘the Government also recognises that the privacy of citizens is of paramount importance’ is at odds with the Government’s track record on privacy, and the Pirate Party views the announcement as suspicious.
[1] https://www.attorneygeneral.gov.au/Mediareleases/Pages/2016/ThirdQuarter/Amendment-to-the-Privacy-Act-to-further-protect-de-identified-data.aspx
[2] https://pirateparty.org.au/media/submissions/PPAU_2016_SERC_Census.pdf