Data Privacy In Australia

This essay discusses the concept of data privacy and the role of the Australian government in ensuring data privacy. It explores the responsibilities of the government, individuals, and business organizations in protecting personal data. The essay also highlights the Australian privacy laws and the need for data protection in the digital age.

Running Head: Data Privacy
Data Privacy In Australia
Essay
System04104
6/2/2019

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Introduction
Data privacy is a major concern in the world. Data privacy provides security to the
personal information of people. However, the concept of data privacy is increasing every day
with increasing use of online resource and information sharing. In the modern days, where
people kept their bank account details on online digital mobile apps, uses internet for online
transactions, and save the personal information on the online app or sharing it from one
person to another person via internet. The increasing use of online transactions of sensitive
and secret information needs more security from government and from the companies
involved in this type of services (Mehmood, Natgunanathan, Xiang, Hua, & Guo, 2016). This
essay is based on such type of privacy issues and role of Australian government in the data
privacy. These data privacy approaches of the government not only protect the individual
data privacy issues, rather also protect the data privacy issue of small and large business
organisations in the country.
What is Data Privacy?
Data privacy refers to ways of handling data, information, or piece of data based on
its relevance or importance. For instance, when a people share his bank accounts details
through internet to another person or party, the interference or theft of his bank account
details by other illegal or unauthorised person, is an example of data privacy
Data Privacy in Australia
Australian government regulated the data privacy issues in Australia by federal, state
and territory laws. The Australian government applies the Federal privacy Act 1998 (Cth)
(Privacy Act) and its Australian privacy principles on small and large business organisations.
Data privacy in Australia is a major concern from last few years as more and more cases
arises every year related to cybercrime and data privacy issues. of However, the General Data
Protection Regulations (GDPR) is the Australian data privacy regulations is responsible for
managing data privacy in Australia and considers some the major issues related to Cyber
securities circles today (Cavoukian & Chibba, 2018).

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Roles and Responsibilities of Government, Individuals, and business
in Data Privacy
The roles and responsibilities of government in the data privacy are a crucial thing in
the data privacy and cyber security in the country. Apart from this, responsibilities of
individuals and business organisation are also important in the data privacy issues and
provide protection from the threats of cyber-attack (He, Chan & Guizani, 2015). The roles of
all these three factors have been discussed in separate paragraphs:
Roles and Responsibilities of Government in Data Privacy
The Australian government holds a huge amount of data of its citizens and other
business organisation in their data bank. This information includes bank account numbers,
transactions details, driver’s license information, social security numbers, taxation, and other
financial information. The major responsibility of the Australian government is to protect the
data from cyber criminals and ensure the security of data they hold. The Australian
government is responsible for formulating a statewide comprehensive approach to security
and security oversight (Carter & Hartridge, 2018). The government should also ensure that
the cyber law of the government is followed by every state and every business organisation in
order to keep the personal data safe and secure. However, the Australian government
formulated many cyber laws in last few years to avoid any cyber threats and attacks.
However, the increasing risk of cyber-attacks on the government sites and data storage is also
increasing, the government needs to improve its cyber security at the highest levels (Daly,
2018).
The Australian privacy laws are influenced by a variety of commonwealth, state, and
territory acts. ‘The privacy act’ are the data protection laws which is responsible to monitor
and regulate the collection of data and provide disclosure of personal information about
individuals, but this act is not responsible for protect the privacy of the individual in a
broader sense (Eckstein, Chalmers, Critchley, Jeanneret, McWhirter, Nielsen, & Nicol,
2018). However, the federal and state government both are responsible to provide security to
the users about their personal data and information. The major responsibility of Australian
federal and state government is to protect the right of people and properly implement the
code of conduct related to Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). It is also the responsibility
of government to establish a standard for collecting and handling the personal information
and ensure that all commonwealth agencies fulfil the same responsibilities. The APPs act in

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Australia is responsible for managing and protecting the data and information. However, it is
the obligation of government to maintain the accurate information and observe the access
right of people to retrieve or using the data. The government should ensure that availability of
information and access of personal information always accessed by the authorised person
rather than any illegal or unethical person (Jackson, O'Donnell, & Cattlin, 2016).
Roles and Responsibilities of Individuals in Data privacy
APP 12 in Australia provides an authority to the individual about the access of data
and set out a period within this the organisation must respond. To protect the data privacy an
individual needs to follow the government law and safety measure to protect the personal
data. An individual has responsibility to does not share the confidential information such as
ids, passwords, banks details, and other credential with other person. An individual must
follow the cyber law when he/she access any information on the internet or share any
sensitive information to other person. However, it has been seen in the country that many
people usually share their personal information or bank account details with some unknown
person on the internet, which later resulted in fraud and people lost all his/her amounts
because he failed to maintain the privacy of his sensitive personal data (Mitchell, Cameron,
McClure & Williamson, 2015).
An individual must need to understand that how people theft the personal data and
use it for their personal benefits. One of the great examples of breaching of data privacy was
seen in 2016, When Cambridge Analytica, which is a data analytics company breaches the
Facebook data privacy, and uses personal data of many individuals from the Facebook and
used it to influence the USA presidential election result. There were many Australians and
other people of different countries reported Facebook that their personal information was
stolen by the Cambridge Analytica for influencing the election result of USA, which is later
accepted by the Cambridge analytica that they did these things (Swieca, Hamilton &
Meaklim, 2017). Therefore, it is the responsibility of people to care about their private
information and do not share any sensitive data such as Bank details, personal information, or
any sensitive information with unknown and unauthorised people or organisation.
Roles and Responsibilities of Business organisations in Data Privacy
Today’s most of the organisation needs a centralise system for data protection in
Australia. Todays, consumers are more aware about the impact of data privacy and its effect
on their personal lives. In the era of digitalisation and online business practices, it is

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important for every business organisation to take care about the user’s data and their private
information (Watts & Casanovas, 2018).
Most of the large business organisations are now operating online business practices
and it needs to store and protect a huge amount of consumer data such as their transaction
records, their choices and preference, payment mode, and through which banks they pay the
money on what time (Yu, Au, Ateniese, Huang, Susilo, Dai, & Min, 2016). Most of these
business practices and consumer actions generate a vast amount of data and it is the
responsibility of a business organisation to protect these personal data and information, so it
cannot be used by any other unauthorised people or cyber hackers. However, it has been seen
that privacy becomes an expectation of customers and it is also a norm that should be
followed by every business organisations, and fail to do so may leads a huge amount of loss
for the business organisations in terms of customer dissatisfaction and their trust. Therefore,
it is not only the responsibility rather it also an essential need for business organisations to
protect the privacy of personal data and information and provide them security from any
unauthorised access or use of personal data or information (Perera, Ranjan, Wang, Khan &
Zomaya, 2015).
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that it is the responsibility of government, individuals and
every business organisation to protect the personal data by taking appropriate actions and
adhering the law related to data privacy. The ‘Australian Privacy Principles’ provide a
guideline for the individuals and business organisations about to protect the personal
information of users. Apart from this, the responsibility of government is also crucial as
government of Australia stored a vast amount of data of its citizens, which is not only
sensitive rather save the whole information about every individual and entity. However, the
major responsibility of government to ensure that people will adhere the cyber law and other
data protection laws, which helps the country to protect the user privacy and their personal
information.

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References
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Eckstein, L., Chalmers, D., Critchley, C., Jeanneret, R., McWhirter, R., Nielsen, J., & Nicol,
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Watts, D., & Casanovas, P. (2018). Privacy and Data Protection in Australia: a Critical
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