Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#2The power corporations are accumulating with information on intimate customer behavior and the glacial response of society to this is a daily refrain on HN. Has anyone seen a comprehensive, or at least collected, list of canonical examples of strong arguments for:
* Raising awareness amongst non-technical folks that such incredible stocking up of PII can raise complicated ethical risks?
* Giving legislative representatives practical and defensible reasons to not just go with the flow and actually have a chance to offer smart legislative options without being shot down?
This particular example is alarming - I can picture plenty of corporations that wouldn't mind the idea of "customer service" representatives casually raising the prospect of releasing customer PII in order to "show their side of the story" as leverage in situations where a customer is threatening to go to an Ombudsman or other public forum.
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#3The power corporations are accumulating with information on intimate customer behavior and the glacial response of society to this is a daily refrain on HN. Has anyone seen a comprehensive, or at least collected, list of canonical examples of strong arguments for: * Raising awareness amongst non-technical folks that such incredible stocking up of PII can raise complicated ethical risks? * Giving legislative represent…
On top of all the complete and utterly ... WRONG ... things that Centrelink have been doing lately, a billion dollar entity attacking a single, disadvantaged person furthers the depths of the inethical behaviours at display by the Australian government.
The list of wrong things include knowingly issuing pay-us-back-or-we'll-empty-your-bank-account legal notices incorrectly, when they clearly averaged e.g. a single high payment month over the whole period when the rules state this is not to be done. Then saying just call us, knowing the call wait lines are so horrid it is a whole day project just to get in touch with anyone.
I'm so over this government.
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#4It is beyond bizarre that their own legal counsel approved the release, especially since they're also under the spotlight at the moment. I'm not sure how they expect to 'maintain public trust by showing their side of the story' when that involves violating privacy.
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#5The power corporations are accumulating with information on intimate customer behavior and the glacial response of society to this is a daily refrain on HN. Has anyone seen a comprehensive, or at least collected, list of canonical examples of strong arguments for: * Raising awareness amongst non-technical folks that such incredible stocking up of PII can raise complicated ethical risks? * Giving legislative represent…
Centrelink is a government body; it is the public facing segment of the federal social security system in Australia.
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#6Australia Australia we love you Australia
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#7No doubting the veracity of this occurrence, but it is baffling that it happened nonetheless - federal government departments here (Australia) are usually cautious to a paranoid level when it comes to people even looking at information. I remember cases when curious internal staff members at the tax and social security offices being sacked on the spot for merely doing searches on celebrity names without due reason.
Both my sisters work in law enforcement agencies, and tell me that their every action on their computer systems is tracked and logged. Once when my younger sister worked in the Traffic infringement section of the local police department, I asked her to check up if I was actually pinged by a remote speed camera that morning as I suspected I was. She refused, on the grounds that any such searches were tracked, and if it was found she did a search against a vehicle belonging to a close family member, it would trigger an internal investigation by the ethics team.
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#8This is a good example of why the "I don't have anything to hide" argument is incorrect.
That way of thinking only works as long as your goals and positions are aligned with the entity collecting information about you to begin with. If they're not, or the situation changes, imbalances of information lead to disadvantages for you pretty quickly.
All it took was some bureaucrat feeling petty.
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#9No doubting the veracity of this occurrence, but it is baffling that it happened nonetheless - federal government departments here (Australia) are usually cautious to a paranoid level when it comes to people even looking at information. I remember cases when curious internal staff members at the tax and social security offices being sacked on the spot for merely doing searches on celebrity names without due reason. B…
I'm an Australian who lived a couple of years in the Bay Area. The views people hold toward privacy was one of the most surprising cultural differences between our countries. As an outsider I was shocked to learn that privacy really is an afterthought for a lot of bay area residents.
US anecdote: a product I worked on had a feature which needs full access to a customer's email account to use. The feature scrapes their inbox and can send emails impersonating our customers' staff. I said there was no way I'd use that feature, but it proved to be super popular! People had no problem handing over access to their entire (work) email account to a startup.
Australia anecdote: When my uncle died we needed to hunt down his bank details. The banks (by law) weren't allowed to even tell us if he was one of their customers without seeing his death certificate and our documentation.
I'm now way more nervous about trusting US based startups with my data. Its not just that many of the engineers are inexperienced, and most startups don't have any security expertise. Its also that culturally I know they probably don't understand personal privacy. I can't trust that they'll protect my data if they might not bother protecting their own.
Re: Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism
#10This is a good example of why the "I don't have anything to hide" argument is incorrect. That way of thinking only works as long as your goals and positions are aligned with the entity collecting information about you to begin with. If they're not, or the situation changes, imbalances of information lead to disadvantages for you pretty quickly. All it took was some bureaucrat feeling petty.
Not only in alignment with some entity collecting the information, in alignment with every entity that might ever look at the information -- for the rest of your life.