Consumer digital rights advocates have rejected media companies’ call to preserve their exemption to privacy law, warning that commercial models should not be put ahead of public interest.
Peter Lewis, the director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology, said it was “disappointing” that the Right to Know coalition “set up with the laudable goal of protecting journalists and whistleblowers is now being deployed to prosecute Big Media’s business interests at the expense of the public they purport to serve”.
The attorney general’s department has proposed creating a right to sue for serious invasions of privacy and scaling back the journalism exemption to privacy law. That would require media companies to secure and destroy private information and to notify affected individuals under the notifiable data breaches scheme.
On Monday the Right to Know coalition – which includes the Guardian, News Corp, Nine, AAP, Free TV Australia, the media union and public broadcasters the ABC and SBS – rejected the proposal, warning that the changes would harm press freedom.
The Centre for Responsible Technology’s submission said it was “supportive” of the department’s proposed reforms, “the first significant upgrade of privacy laws in four decades”.
“In the intervening period, the business models around the commercial exploitation of personal data have grown exponentially as have the human consequences of these models,” it said.
“These changes do not just compromise the privacy of individuals, they are undermining the structures of our civil society, with increases to polarisation and the undermining of the public realm.”
The Centre for Responsible Technology noted privacy law reform was central to the competition regulator’s 2019 digital platforms inquiry, which led to the creation of the world-first news media bargaining code, helping media companies reap millions in revenue from Facebook and Google.
“It is important to realise [the code] was part of a package of reforms. Any attempt to water down reforms proposed by the attorney general would fundamentally undermine the integrity of this broader package of reforms.”
Media companies which were “vocal” in arguing “for the public interest in mitigating the growing monopoly power of big tech” should also endorse the proposed new privacy measures, it said.
The University of Technology Sydney’s human technology institute submitted that there was an “urgent” need to reform privacy law, given the rise of technologies including artificial intelligence and facial recognition.
It argued that because harming the right to privacy could only be justified in limited circumstances “it is difficult, if not impossible, to justify” a blanket exemption to privacy law such as for all journalists and political parties.
The co-director of the institute Ed Santow, the former human rights commissioner, told Guardian Australia that the “activity” – journalism – “might give rise to a limitation on the right to privacy” rather than the journalists and media companies enjoying a blanket exemption.
“There is a legitimate limitation on the right to privacy that journalism can justify but … it’s not that all media organisations in all their activities – some which have nothing to do with journalism at all – that should be exempt from the right to privacy.”
Santow noted in some ways this could “broaden the protection” to include people outside media companies engaged in journalism.
Santow said it would be a “tragedy” if areas where the law was “dangerously out of date” – such as regulating facial recognition – did not progress “because of a small number of controversial issues” in the proposed package including “media organisations and small businesses defending their privileged position”.
Digital Rights Watch called to abolish the exemptions for small businesses and political parties and agreed with the department’s proposal to trim back the journalism exemption.
