Obscurity

'Obscurity and Privacy' by Evan Selinger and Woodrow Hartzog in Joseph Pitt and Ashley Shew (eds) Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Technology (Routledge, 2014) comments

‘Obscurity’ is a distinctive concept in the privacy literature that has recently been gaining attention due to increasing frustration with the theoretical and practical limits of traditional privacy theory. 

Obscurity identifies some of the fundamental ways information can be obtained or kept out of reach, correctly interpreted or misunderstood. Appeals to obscurity can generate explanatory power, clarifying how advances in the sciences of data collection and analysis, innovation in domains related to information and communication technology, and changes to social norms can alter the privacy landscape and give rise to three core problems: 1) new breaches of etiquette, 2) new privacy interests, and 3) new privacy harms. 

This entry reviews the concept of obscurity and its theoretical, legal, normative, and technical foundations.

Haddad

In Haddad v Nationwide News Pty Ltd; Cheikho v Nationwide News Pty Ltd (No 2) [2014] NSWSC 775 the New South Wales Supreme Court has refused to consolidate two sets defamation proceedings which arose out of articles published by Nationwide concerning the Sydney protest against the Youtube 'Innocence of Muslims' video.

The NSWSC ruled that although the two proceedings raised common questions and relied on common defences, there was substantial risk of prejudice against each of the plaintiffs in both proceedings if the proceedings were to have been tried together.

Averting a Cascade of Sorrows

The Disaster and disadvantage: Social vulnerability in emergency management report [PDF] from the Victorian Council of Social Service notes that

Disasters and emergencies such as bushfires, floods and heatwaves can affect all Australians, no matter what their background or status. But they don’t affect us all equally. Experience and research tells us that disasters are in fact “profoundly discriminatory”, both in where they strike, and in the way they affect people.

While they can be devastating for all affected individuals and communities and cause great physical, financial and psychological hardship, for people who are already facing disadvantage, the impacts can be overwhelming, leading – in the words of one mother – to a “cascade of sorrows”.

People facing disadvantage, such as those in poverty, migrants, refugees, children, older people, people with disabilities, people who are homeless or transient, and people living in poor quality housing, are more vulnerable at all stages of a disaster – before, during, and after it strikes. These people are considered ‘socially vulnerable’ in the face of a disaster.

Whether it is their capacity to evacuate in time or to recover in the long term from trauma and financial devastation, socially vulnerable people are hit hardest and longest by disasters and emergencies. These people often have fewer resources and less social support, mobility and housing options at their disposal, and so are less able to prepare for, respond to and recover from a disaster or emergency.

As one report put it, socially vulnerable are “more likely to die...and less likely to recover.”

Victorians have witnessed and experienced this in recent years, with the devastation of the 2009 Victorian bushfires, enduring drought, the 2009 and 2014 heatwaves, the 2010–11 floods and the impact on Morwell residents of the Hazelwood coal mine fire; as well as hundreds of smaller emergencies and disasters across the state.

In the 2009 bushfires – one of Australia’s worst natural disasters, in which 173 people died – children, older people, people with physical or cognitive disabilities and their carers made up nearly half the death toll. The 2009 and 2014 heatwaves exacted their worst toll on older people and those in poor health, those confined to poor quality rental ‘hot boxes’, those who were homeless, and those with mental health issues who may not have understood or acted on warnings and taken precautions.

Elsewhere, the risks are similar. In the 2011 Queensland floods, a family in their home were unable to save their grandmother because they could not lift her up onto the roof to safety. During Hurricane Katrina in the United States, older people, those in poor health and people on low incomes were most at risk: the first reported deaths were three nursing home patients who died during evacuation, most likely from dehydration.

These and other case studies outlined in this report tell us it is not just the event, but pre-existing structural disadvantages that can deliver devastating blows to vulnerable people and communities in disasters.

These socially vulnerable people frequently have little choice in deciding where they live, and are often disproportionately concentrated in areas at high risk of negative environmental impacts. They often have fewer economic resources to assist with preparing for and managing extreme weather, including being able to take out insurance against loss. They may have chronic physical and mental health conditions that affect their mobility and resilience, or lack access to mainstream sources of information about impending danger because of language barriers, remoteness, and poverty. They often require greater support in evacuation and recovery, including mobilising wheelchairs and maintaining ongoing access to care and medication in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. They may also have less of a public voice and less ability to influence decision-makers such as governments.

Much has been done in Australia and particularly Victoria in recent years to improve disaster prevention, preparation, response and recovery arrangements. However there remain significant policy gaps around effectively building the resilience and meeting the needs of socially vulnerable people.

This report describes who is most at risk of being socially vulnerable in an emergency or disaster and what needs to be done to better protect them and improve their recovery. After assessing the causes of social vulnerability and the needs of socially vulnerable people, the report also puts forward a set of recommendations aimed at assisting the emergency management sector to better incorporate the needs of socially vulnerable people in its planning processes

The report offers the following recommendations

That the emergency management sector seeks to better understand the diversity of communities, including the needs of socially vulnerable people. This can be achieved by:

• acknowledging the diversity of communities 
• improving cultural competency within the sector 
• ensuring the sector understands the unique strengths and needs of socially vulnerable people and communities 
• establishing trusted and respected networks with socially vulnerable communities
• establishing networks with organisations that represent socially vulnerable people, such as community sector organisations. 

That the emergency management sector plans effectively for socially vulnerable people and communities, in partnership with the community sector. This process should include efforts to:

• formally identify, consult with and incorporate local community organisations in emergency management planning 
• identify socially vulnerable groups and people within communities in consultation with community organisations 
• support links and partnerships between community sector organisations and the emergency management sector to improve emergency preparedness, response and recovery for socially vulnerable people 
• develop clearer mechanisms in Victoria’s emergency management arrangements to enable community organisations to expediently recover costs incurred through supporting socially vulnerable people in emergencies 
• further consider how whole-of-government and whole-of-sector approaches to supporting socially vulnerable people can be improved through formal and informal collaborative arrangements. 

That the emergency management sector deliver enhanced emergency response, relief and recovery measures that specifically support socially vulnerable people by:

• • ensuring emergency warning systems are accessible for culturally and linguistically diverse people, older people, people with cognitive, visual and hearing impairments and those without IT access 
• developing strategies for those who may require assistance to evacuate, such as people with disabilities or older people 
• providing specific facilities and support for children, older people and people with disabilities at emergency relief centres 
• providing emergency housing for high-risk groups including children under protection, women and children who have fled family violence, and people who have previously experienced trauma 
• ensuring all organisations who play a role in relief and recovery efforts clearly understand their roles and responsibilities and are resourced to fulfil them 
• providing financial support, trauma counselling, medical and pharmaceutical access and other additional support services for socially vulnerable people 
• supporting the longer-term work of organisations supporting socially vulnerable individuals, families and communities. 

That the emergency management sector develops targeted, effective communication methods for reaching socially vulnerable people with information and messages that are:

• • expressed in all relevant community languages 
• delivered in formats that are accessible for those with vision and hearing impairments 
• accessible to those with cognitive impairments
• accessible to those who have limited IT access 
• delivered through a range of mediums including newspaper, radio, social media and word-of-mouth through trusted community leaders 
• delivered to community sector organisations that can quickly pass these on to socially vulnerable people. 

That the Victorian government works to address the causes of disadvantage to reduce the prevalence of social vulnerability and build resilience before emergencies occur by:

• developing integrated early childhood services that support vulnerable children 
• improving child protection services 
• reducing the cost and improving the quality of housing for people on low incomes 
• reducing violence against women and children 
• improving workforce participation 
• assisting people on low incomes to improve the energy efficiency of their homes 
•  reducing crime through justice reinvestment 
• delivering funding fairness for community services 
• developing a whole-of-government plan for social policy change.

Bentham on sticks

The spirited 'The idea of human rights' by James F. P. Allan in (2013) 25(1) Bond Law Review 1 comments

My brief for this piece was to write on human rights. That left two main options. I could undertake a fairly specific black letter critique of bills of rights. I am a strong opponent of these instruments, in either their entrenched, constitutionalised form or in their statutory, enacted form. The former you see in Canada and the United States of America; the latter you see in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and in Victoria. In my view both forms are pernicious; both forms undermine democratic decision- making; both forms unduly enhance the point-of-application power of unelected judges on a host of issues that are in effect moral and political ones – ones over which judges (committees of ex-lawyers as Jeremy Waldron continually reminds us) have no greater expertise, no superior moral perspicacity, no better pipeline to God than the rest of us non-judges, otherwise known as voters. I could go through the problems with bills of rights in some detail if I were to choose this option. I have written fairly extensively along these lines. 

Here I have chosen the other option, writing about human rights more generally – what they are; where they come from; what people presumably mean when they invoke this abstraction of ‘human rights’ and when they intone, rhetorically, ‘Don’t you want your rights protected?’ My topic is the idea of human rights. But I approach that subject in a rather indirect, Alistair Cooke-like way. 

I start by pointing out that people often fight and argue over concepts and terms and what they mean. This is especially true of concepts or notions that carry with them a big emotive punch, where just having the word or phrase on your side is an advantage. They are rhetorical trump cards – such as the phrase ‘Rule of Law’ or the word ‘democracy’. 

Everyone wants to employ these concepts to advance their side of an argument but not everyone agrees about their content. They are ‘essentially contested concepts’, as the British philosopher W.B. Gallie put it.  People disagree as to what is actually meant by ‘democracy’ or by ‘the Rule of Law’. 

Acknowledging this reality that differences of opinion and disagreement can be, and are, between sides where both parties are well-intentioned, smart and well-informed is not the most notable virtue of many bill of rights proponents. Often their default position is simply to assume that the proponent’s own first order preferences and moral evaluations are, by some unexplained and wholly mysterious process, the self- evidently morally correct and right ones. These evaluations are employed when it comes to, say, where to draw the line on free speech issues, or refugee issues, or cross-examining rape complainant issues, or same sex marriage issues, or abortion issues, or euthanasia issues, or shooting Osama Bin Laden issues, and so on to extend to any contested rights-related issue. 

These proponents often talk about human rights and their side of an issue as though they are the superbly well-informed, altruistic side with a mystical and ineffable pipeline to God while the other side is best understood as being motivated by reactionary, borderline racist, and certainly stupid sentiments that could do with a few months in a re-education camp. 

However, almost all disagreements in societies of 22 million or 65 million or 330 million cannot be explained away using this ‘I’m morally superior and smarter than everyone who disagrees with me’ template, with its concomitant claims that everyone who disagrees is defective, dumb or evil. The truth, the reality, the best description of the way the world is, almost always is that disagreement is just a fact of social life in a country where tens of millions of people live. Neither side of these debates – at least to the disinterested observer – has higher levels of moral perspicacity or personal probity or greater access to eternal truths. 

People just disagree, no doubt linked in part to their upbringings and circumstances and sentiments. What is relevant here is that they disagree not just about these first- order issues but also about the meaning of important concepts and terms. That means that sometimes a debate can be won by capturing a word, even though there may be a struggle to win the debate on its merits. 

Take this example. Suppose you do not have much confidence in the views, beliefs and sentiments of your fellow citizens. You do not think much of the political and moral choices of the majority, the plumbers, secretaries, teachers and even derivatives traders who make up that majority. 

But of course you do not want to come out of the closet and say you are against democracy, the idea of counting all voters as equal and then letting the numbers count. It is too hard in today’s world to admit openly that you are a latter day aristocrat, and prefer top judges and overseas committee members of United Nations agencies to have considerably more say on a host of debatable social policy issues than your fellow citizens. 

Instead, you redefine the concept of ‘democracy’. You take the core idea related to how decisions ought to be made and stuff it full of moral abstractions; you make it more morally pregnant. Democracy now means not just ‘how’ decisions are taken. It also includes a judgment related to ‘what’ those decisions were and whether they are acceptable (to some kept-from-view aristocratic group or other). 

You now get to assess how rights-respecting some statute passed by the elected legislature was, or whether it was unduly illiberal. If it was too illiberal, then on this new understanding it does not count as democratic, despite it being a product of the majority’s legislature. Of course left wholly out of sight are two things. Firstly, people disagree about what is and is not rights-respecting. Secondly, the judges and internationalists, who will now get to make some of the authoritative calls, do not have a pipeline to God on these issues. It is a neat trick. All of a sudden, our redefined notion of democracy builds in a role for an exclusive group of people, a role that lets them gainsay and second-guess the majority. Yet it still gets to be called ‘democracy’. 

That is one example of what I mean by an essentially contested concept. It may sound familiar because precisely that attempt to redefine the concept of ‘democracy’ has taken, and is taking, place right now in the West. 

I could make much the same sort of point as regards ‘the Rule of Law’, that there are two main competing notions as to what this phrase encompasses. One is a morally Spartan one about the good consequences that flow from having a legal system with general rules, known in advance, able to be complied with, and applying to everyone. But this ‘thin’ notion is compatible with having laws you judge to be morally bad. A newer understanding of this concept is more morally pregnant and basically builds in a ‘these laws must be morally good ones, or at least not morally terrible ones’ (according to me) before giving them the ‘Rule of Law’ tick or label. … Up in the Olympian heights of moral abstractions – where we talk of the right to free speech or to freedom of religion and where disagreement tends to be finessed and glossed over – you can achieve almost universal agreement. But down in the quagmire of day-to-day social policy decision-making you never have that sort of consensus. 

That means that the language of human rights can achieve a sort of bogus consensus because it deals in moral abstractions so abstract and so couched in emotively appealing connotations and generalisations that almost everyone can sign up to it. That is the power of the language of human rights. 

But underneath that finessed, very abstract notion, what actions are and are not on the side of ‘human rights’ is not something that defines itself. It is contestable, and contested. Just because someone proclaims himself or herself to be on the side of human rights it does not necessarily follow that others – on hearing that person’s views on specific issues – will agree with those views. Nor does it follow that they will concede that this proclaimer – him or her not them – is the one on the side of human rights. 

One of the great tricks – I would say fallacies even – of those who campaign for a bill of rights in Australia is to exclaim ‘Don’t you want your rights protected?’ As if Australians do not right now have more scope to speak their minds than Canadians do (as regards, say, potentially defamatory words, or hate speech or words related to election campaigns and the rules that finance them). You see even though Canada has a super potent, constitutionally entrenched bill of rights, and Australia has none, it turns out Australians in fact have greater scope to speak our minds. 

And as if in any political system known to man you (or anyone else) will always be on the winning side of every line-drawing exercise about such things as whether women ought to be able to wear headscarves in schools or people claiming refugee status ought to be virtually unhindered in arriving in a country or whether women who allege they have been raped ought not to be subjected to the full panoply of cross-examination questions during the accused’s criminal trial. 

Take that last example, not least because it turns the tables on the pro-bill of rights brigade which tends to assume, unwarrantedly, that these instruments are a guarantee of nice progressive outcomes. In the United Kingdom the legislature passed a statute restricting somewhat what a defence barrister could ask a woman who was a complainant in a rape trial about her own past sexual activity. However, the highest court in the United Kingdom, under the United Kingdom’s statutory bill of rights, said this law was a breach of people’s timeless, fundamental human rights, specifically the ‘right to a fair trial’. 

My point is that that is a debatable call, either way. The real issue is not who is and is not on the side of human rights. The real issue is which institution should be making these debatable line-drawing decisions, the elected Parliament or the unelected judiciary (because remember, when you buy a bill of rights what you are really buying is a much enhanced decision-making role for judges, whether the bill of rights be of the statutory or constitutionalised variety). No institution will produce outcomes with which you agree 100 percent of the time. It is about which has the best hit rate on average over time. Is it the one that is accountable to the voters and can be tossed out after making calls on these moral and political issues? Or is it the one that takes these moral and political issues, translates them into pseudo-legal ones, and issues absolutist sounding claims – even when the outcome in court was 4-3 or 5-4, where if one judge had changed his or her mind your timeless, fundamental rights would magically and mysteriously be the exact opposite of what they ended up being declared to be?

Allan concludes

Let me simply finish by reiterating that behind the finessing abstractions of the language of human rights is this reality. A right is a rule. That right can be a legal one whose origin and source is clear (namely a statute, judge-made ruling, constitutional provision), though its desirability is contested. Alternatively, that right can be a moral claim, the source of which is highly contestable and contested, along with its desirability. The language of human rights conflates those two sorts of rights or rules. Jeremy Bentham some two centuries ago insisted on keeping the two separate, the legal ‘is’ claim and the non-legal ‘ought’ claim. The language and absolutist inclinations of human rights thinking prefers to conflate and blend together the two. Bentham said separating the two led to better consequences in terms of human welfare than this natural law type conflation.

I am very much of Bentham’s point of view.

Readers of this blog will recognise that I am not of Mr Bentham's point of view

Bureaucratic Convenience

I've argued elsewhere that trust is a key aspect of calls by law enforcement and national security agencies for greater powers and the relaxation of administrative burdens. Regrettably members of the thin blue line on occasion mistake bureaucratic convenience for substantive need and are presumably perplexed by critics who are unimpressed by institutional overreaching.

The Australian reports that South Australian police "want sweeping changes to privacy laws to allow government departments to dob in criminals who use them to hide the proceeds of their illegal activities". Privacy laws supposedly "prevent state and federal government agencies from disclosing almost all private information to police, even when they suspect illegal activity".

SA Police Commissioner Gary Burns has reportedly told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement inquiry into financial crime that Australia Post, the Department of Immigration & Border Protection, Centrelink and other government entities must be allowed to "volunteer" private information. Burns' submission calls on changes to legislation regulating the collection and subsequent disclosure of information, albeit apparently acknowledging that the law features "specific exemptions permitting disclosure".

In an ambitious call for an easier life Burns states that police want

• simpler access to state and national databases which use facial identification such as passports and driver’s licences. 
• national rollout of facial recognition technology across all government departments. 
• real-time blocks on bank accounts without the account holder’s consent. 
• using new technology to speed up information exchange between police and financial institutions. 

The Australian article quotes SA Commissioner for Victims’ Rights Michael O’Connell as commenting that the ability of financial criminals to hide large amounts of money from state police was one of the keys to their success.

The ease with which offenders can move the proceeds of their unlawful deeds across borders is a primary factor facilitating the success of cross-jurisdictional crime such as fraud. Conversely, those borders are often obstacles to police and law enforcement.  The economic costs and impact upon victims as well as others who fear being defrauded is enormous. There should be swift and collaborated responses that a respectful of victims’ rights and minimise the risk of secondary victimisation. 

Why stop there? Burns is reported as criticising international agreements which required requests for assistance to foreign authorities.

Mutual assistance requests are cumbersome and time-consuming. The delay in the provision of requested material can often frustrate investigations and the court process.

His advisers perhaps need to bring him up to speed about international law, i.e. the South Australian law does not extend to Thailand, China or the UK. The SA Police would presumably be underwhelmed if directed by an overseas counterpart to stand and deliver.

The submission by the Australian Bankers Association comments that

Whilst identity fraud relating to credit cards is an issue, a potentially more serious and worrying problem is emerging. With the increased utilisation by security teams of data analytics, Australian financial institutions are increasingly detecting potential identity fraud, particularly amongst non-Australian resident customers, specifically the use of what appears to be false passports in the customer on boarding (Know Your Customer) process. 

Unlike the Attorney-General’s Document Verification Service, there is no mechanism for Australian banks to verify that a passport which looks genuine is actually legitimate, or that it has actually been used to legally enter Australia (helping reinforce one identity per person). Numerous instances have been identified where accounts have been opened by foreign customers (e.g. tourists, students, working holiday visa holders) using a passport which appears genuine, but which returns an invalid result when checked with the issuing authority overseas. In these cases, it is not unusual for accounts to be used for money laundering purposes, or to be used to perpetrate fraud against the parent (or another) financial institution. The current reliance on attempting to manually verify individual identity documents with the issuer is sometimes feasible for one-off cases (depending on the issuing jurisdiction), but it becomes unworkable as volumes increase. 

Ideally, a mechanism would be developed to enable Australian banks to validate foreign customer identity documents as legitimate, either at the source through the host country, Interpol, or as a fall-back against Australian Customs and Immigration Passenger Movements. Early identification of false or suspicious identities, combined with an agreed reporting mechanism (e.g. AUSTRAC, AFP) would enable early intervention by law enforcement as well as potentially disrupt organised financial crime and money laundering activity.

Novel Food

The Independent features an item on emerging regulation of placentophagy, ie the ingestion of the human placenta in the form of pills and raw/processed shakes.

[A] shock ruling last week has put the centuries-old tradition under threat, after the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) stepped in to classify placenta as a "novel food". Lawyers said the move undermined women's rights to decide what to do with their bodies.

The UK Food Standards Agency [FSA] has granted a one-month window, until 11 July, for anyone unhappy with the ruling to prove that human placenta is not a so-called novel food. 

Ingestion of the placenta supposedly provides an energy boost, restores iron levels, and help breast-milk production.

The FSA regulatory window supposedly allows

anyone unhappy with the ruling to prove that human placenta is not a so-called novel food. This requires evidence that EU women were eating their placentas before 15 May 1997, the date the European Commission introduced novel food legislation to stop the sale of products derived from GM crops. ...

It means that from mid-July, anyone offering placenta encapsulation services will be at "risk of prosecution or unlawful marketing of novel food", said Elizabeth Prochaska, a barrister specialising in women's rights for the charity Birthrights.

The ruling threatens the future for 102 members of the Independent Placenta Encapsulation Network (Ipen), a grassroots group of midwives and doulas, or labour coaches, set up three years ago to tap into the trend for eating placenta. Ipen practitioners, who normally work from their own homes, charge £150 for capsules and £25 to make a placenta smoothie.

The FSA indicates that

Following discussion with our counterparts in the other EU member states, we are currently of the view that foods containing human placenta are novel and are therefore regulated under Council Regulation (EC) 258/97 on novel foods and food ingredients.

Under Regulation 258/97, a novel food or ingredient is defined as one that was not consumed to a significant degree in the European Community before 15 May 1997. Novel foods and food ingredients may only be marketed if they have been evaluated and authorised under the procedures defined in the regulation. Human placenta and products derived from human placenta have not been authorised under this regulation.

The Agency is not aware of any evidence for a history of consumption of such products anywhere in the EU before May 1997 and we are therefore minded to view them to be novel foods, which cannot legally be sold until they have been formally authorised. As such, any operator who wishes to market foods containing human placenta in the EU will need to apply for an authorisation under Regulation (EC) 258/97. Such an authorisation would require the submission of a dossier to one of the 28 EU Member States, demonstrating that the ingredient (a) does not present a risk to the consumer; (b) does not mislead the consumer; and (c) is not nutritionally disadvantageous compared with other foods that it might replace in the diet.

The Independent article features the usual rights discourse. One  Ipen service provider says a blanket ban would be wrong because placentas were not being sold as food. "We're just processing a woman's own placenta."

Tanya Hempenstall, 40, from south London, had her placenta dried and made into pills after the birth of her second son, Ryan, which involved a Caesarean section and the loss of 1.5 litres of blood. She said: "My recovery was so quick... [the placenta] is something that's come out of my body, so I should be responsible for the effects it has on me."

Prochaska is quoted as commenting

It's strange to classify something that's part of a woman's physiology as a novel food. Legally it's not very clear cut.

As an Australian law academic I would, respectfully, disagree: human blood (or the equivalent of succulent pork loin and lamb's fry and bacon) is not a conventional food, albeit there is some history of placentophagy. Body parts are perhaps best left to Armin Meiwe.

The Independent concludes

Janet Fyle, a policy adviser at the Royal College of Midwives, said: "Some women who've had post-natal depression find it makes a difference." She added: "Whatever women do in their own home is their business."

To a point, Lord Copper .

A 2013 LA Weekly article title 'Placenta: It's What's for Dinner' features the claim by one enthusiastic 'placenta encapsulator' that "Your own body made it, it's just for you ... No one could prescribe anything more perfect than what your body has made for you".

Anthropologists and health researchers appear to have a less romantic approach. 'Attitudes toward placentophagy: a brief report' by Cremers and Low in (2014) 35(2) Health Care Women Int 113-119 for example comments that

Placentophagy is the consumption of the placenta after birth. For the present study, an online survey explored knowledge and attitudes toward the practice. Participants (N = 216, 78.7% female, 19.9% male) completed Internet-based surveys on placentophagy. A majority (66%) had heard about placentophagy, and of these, 23.1% had learned about the practice through the media. A small number of participants (3.3%) had eaten human placental tissue. Male and female respondents did not differ in willingness to eat placenta (χ (2)(2) = 1.60, p = .45). Contrary to popular belief, placentophagy appears to be rare in human history and across cultures. Future research should explore changing attitudes toward placentophagy across cultures.

'In search of human placentophagy: a cross-cultural survey of human placenta consumption, disposal practices, and cultural beliefs' by Young and Benyshek in (2010) 49(6) Ecology of Food and Nutrition 467-84 comments

Maternal placentophagy, the consumption of the placenta or "afterbirth" by the mother following parturition, is an ubiquitous behavior among eutherian mammals, including non-human primates. Here we report on a cross-cultural survey of 179 human societies regarding the consumption, treatment, and disposal of human placenta, in addition to accompanying cultural beliefs and perceptions about the organ. The conspicuous absence of cultural traditions associated with maternal placentophagy in the cross-cultural ethnographic record raises interesting questions relative to its ubiquitous presence among nearly all other mammals, and the reasons for its absence (or extreme rarity) among prehistoric/historic and contemporary human cultures.

'Human Maternal Placentophagy: A Survey of Self-Reported Motivations and Experiences Associated with Placenta Consumption' by Selander, Cantor, Young and Benyshek in (2013) 52(2) Ecology of Food and Nutrition 93-115 notes

Maternal placentophagy, although widespread among mammals, is conspicuously absent among humans cross-culturally. Recently, however, advocates for the practice have claimed it provides human postpartum benefits. Despite increasing awareness about placentophagy, no systematic research has investigated the motivations or perceived effects of practitioners. We surveyed 189 females who had ingested their placenta and found the majority of these women reported perceived positive benefits and indicated they would engage in placentophagy again after subsequent births. Further research is necessary to determine if the described benefits extend beyond those of placebo effects, or are skewed by the nature of the studied sample.

Immigration Data Breach Report

The Department of Immigration & Border Protection (DIBP) has released an edited report by KPMG regarding the breach of sensitive information noted earlier this year and reflected in recent judgments.

The report [PDF] appears in a format apparently aimed at inhibiting copying. Alas, if only the Department had taken similar care regarding safeguarding of information about vulnerable people.

KPMG - somewhat at odds with recent statements by the Department - indicates that  the breached document was downloaded 123 times “from multiple sources” with 104 unique IP addresses. The “potential data access and distribution is widespread”, with scope for dissemination to readers who might not have the best interests of the refugees at heart

The report notes confusion and resultant susceptibility to "human error" within DIBP regarding the clearance checks needed for publishing material on the web, with checking of documents involving scrutiny of hardcopy rather than softcopy.

KPMG indicates that

neither the content authors, nor the director of the responsible reporting team” were aware that they were responsible for assuring material was appropriately monitored and controlled for publication on the web. Authors and approvers were generally unaware that the IT security risk which led to this incident, could occur and were therefore not mindful of checking for indicators of this risk

KPMG recommends that DIBP develop procedures for “cleansing” personal data, update review procedures, develop an IT security training program and incorporate privacy training in connection with the Australian Privacy Principles.

The separate review by the OAIC is apparently still underway.

The data breach of the day meanwhile comes from Optus, which is reported by the SMH to have mistakenly provided Sensis - the White Pages publisher - with the names, mobile numbers and addresses of an undisclosed number of 'silent' customers. The info accordingly appeared in the Sensis online and print directory.

Optus  discovered the problem in April and - of course - " took immediate steps to remove customers’ details from the White Pages online". The telco reportedly began  notifying customers  last week, with a letter  indicating that

Optus can confirm that a system configuration error has resulted in the numbers of some pre-paid mobile and mobile broadband customers being incorrectly listed in the White Pages. 

All necessary steps have been taken to ensure personal information has been removed from online and operator-assisted directory listing services and from all future hard-copy editions of the White Pages.

 Optus is reportedly arranging a free change of mobile number for affected customers. The SMH notes the usual rhetoric -

Optus is focused on making things better for our customers, which means being honest and transparent about our mistakes and fixing them when they occur.

“Optus apologises to all customers who have been affected by this mistake.

Customers who wish to change their number or speak directly with Optus about this matter should contact us ... Monday to Friday 9am-5pm AEST.