The
Guardian reports
The personal details of hundreds of asylum seekers on Nauru have been stolen in a second major data breach within Australia’s immigration detention system.
At least two hard drives, not password-protected and containing the personal details of hundreds of asylum seekers, including children, have been stolen from detention camps this year.
The sensitive information stolen includes detainees’ complete personal details and case files, medical histories, as well as their protection claims detailing why they felt forced to leave their home country to claim asylum in Australia.
The stolen files also contain case worker notes on detainees, including mental health and behavioural issues, complaints about treatment and allegations of abuse, and the minutes of “vulnerable minors meetings” where the issues faced by children in detention were discussed.
None of the information has been recovered after several months.
Guardian Australia understands the asylum seekers have not been told their personal information has been stolen.
Never fear
A manager from Wilson Security promised to review security in response to the thefts.
'The Dawn of the Age of the Drones: An Australian Privacy Law Perspective' by Des Butler in (2014) 37(2)
UNSW Law Journal 434 comments
Suppose a homeowner habitually enjoys sunbathing in his or her backyard, protected by a high fence from prying eyes, including those of an adolescent neighbour. In times past such homeowners could be assured that they might go about their activities without a threat to their privacy. However, recent years have seen technological advances in the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (‘UAVs’), also known colloquially as drones, that have allowed them to become reduced in size, complexity and price. UAVs today include models retailing to the public for less than $350 and with an ease of operation that enables them to serve as mobile platforms for miniature cameras. These machines now mean that for individuals like the posited homeowner’s adolescent neighbour, barriers such as high fences no longer constitute insuperable obstacles to their voyeuristic endeavours. Moreover, ease of access to the internet and video sharing websites provides a ready means of sharing any recordings made with such cameras with a wide audience. Persons in the homeowner’s position might understandably seek some form of redress for such egregious invasions of their privacy. Other than some form of self-help, what alternative measures may be available?
Under Australian law this problem yields no easy answer. In this country,
a fractured landscape of common law, Commonwealth and state/territory legislation provides piecemeal protection against invasions of privacy by cameras mounted on UAVs. It is timely, at what may be regarded as the early days of the drone age, to consider these laws and to identify deficiencies that may need to be addressed lest, to quote words that are as apt today as they were when written over 120 years ago, ‘modern enterprise and invention … through invasions upon [their] privacy, [subject victims] to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury.
