Fringe-dwelling firms are finding sneaky ways to exploit government agreements to milk them for private data never envisaged when the deal was originally done. In the West, you park at your peril, because the government willy-nilly hands over your private address details – despite previously saying the information was ‘off limits’
Note to Minister: we pay you to make the law
WA Transport Minister Troy Buswell seems to have conveniently forgotten that Parliament makes the laws which the courts interpret, says Civil Liberties Australia’s WA spokesperson Rex Widerstrom
“Mr Buswell says his government had no choice but to comply with a Supreme Court order to hand over the private and personal details of more than 10,000 of its citizens to a private company, Wilson Parking,” Mr Widerstrom said.
“But Mr Buswell always had it within his power to protect the privacy of WA citizens, he simply chose not to act. After the company won a test case in which the court said it could have the details of 20 people, the government could simply have passed a law protecting the information it holds from commercial exploitation. The courts would then have been obliged to uphold that law, and not the one under which Wilsons obtained the information.
“Governments change the law to suit themselves. Sometimes they’ve been known to do so retrospectively, in order to undo something they don’t like. So Mr Buswell’s lament that his government is somehow powerless at the hands of the courts simply doesn’t fly.
“He should have asked his Attorney General, Christian Porter, for advice. Mr Porter is on record on numerous occasions saying that he’ll change the law because he doesn’t like the decisions being reached in the courts.
“If Mr Buswell wants to do more than pay lip service to the rights of WA’s citizens to be protected from profiteering by Wilson Parking, then it is still within his power to do so. A law which prevented the disclosed data from being used for a commercial purpose would mean Wilson’s hands were tied. We call on him to do so as a matter of urgency,” Mr Widerstrom said.
– Thursday 22 December 2011
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/12432524/parking-giant-gets-motorists-details/