News and Research articles on Australia

This paper is part of Geopolitics, jurisdiction and surveillance, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Monique Mann and Angela Daly. Introduction Since the Snowden revelations in 2013 (see e.g., Lyon, 2014; Lyon, 2015) an ongoing policy issue has been the legitimate scope of surveillance, and the extent to which individuals and groups can assert their fundamental rights, including privacy. There has been a renewed focus on policies regarding access to encrypted communications, which are part of a longer history of the ‘cryptowars’ of the 1990s (see e.g., Koops, 1999). We examine these provisions in the Anglophone ‘Five Eyes’ (FVEY) The FVEY partnership is a comprehensive …

Australia’s encryption laws reflect a pattern of politically charged, rights-infringing responses to terrorism within a permissive constitutional environment.

This paper examines data protection policies in Australia and Europe and outlines how both frameworks evoke different notions of citizenship.

How do we construct and deliver data privacy rights? We discuss two recent Australian initiatives on regulation of digital platforms and a new consumer data right.

This paper is part of Australian internet policy, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Angela Daly and Julian Thomas. Acknowledgement: Thanks to the Melbourne Networked Society Institute at the University of Melbourne for funding our research project ‘The Internet of Things (IoT) and Consumer Privacy’, 2015-2016, and to our participants for generously sharing their experiences and concerns about the IoT. Some of the information and ideas in this article draw on Richardson et al., 2016. Introduction Collaboration, networking and innovation are predicted to change radically as we move into an era of the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the fastest-growing trends in …

This paper is part of Australian internet policy, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Angela Daly and Julian Thomas. Introduction In 2007, the Australian government took a dramatic new approach to the governance and management of remote Indigenous communities. The ‘Northern Territory Intervention’, as it became commonly known, was introduced as a means to combat child abuse and domestic violence in remote Indigenous communities, and included far-reaching changes to welfare administration, employment programmes and policing. Although the Intervention, which persisted until 2012, has been the subject of a great deal of public commentary and critique, one dimension has …

Internet accessibility for people with disabilities is long overdue. We draw on pioneering Australian efforts, compared with recent US and European initiatives, to argue for better disability internet policy now.

The ‘lawful’ intrusion or interference with information communication infrastructures poses challenges to democratic freedoms in Australia.

This paper is part of Australian internet policy, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Angela Daly and Julian Thomas. Part I: The Data Retention Act In April 2015, the Australian government passed the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act, which requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telecommunications providers to store information about their subscribers’ online activity for a period of two years. The data retention rules apply to metadata – loosely defined as information that is not the 'content' of a communication. Generally, service providers must keep identifying information about their subscribers, including billing …