Privacy and Legislation

Question: Explain the current legislation in Australia that governs privacy. Answer: Current legislation in Australia that governs privacy. This legislation is a privacy act that is used to govern and regulate the way government agencies and private sector organizations gather, use, keep, secure and disclose personal information. It differs from the previous privacy act in that it contains a single set of principles known as the Australian Privacy Principle which offers principles that guides on how information should be handled and the agencies or organizations had to apply them in their own situation. (Milberg, Smith, Burke 2000). Importance of privacy legislation to Express Books Express Books is a large business organization. Due to its huge size it deals with and manages a lot of personal information of its stake holders such as employees, creditors, shareholders, suppliers and even government agencies. Express books would find privacy legislation to be a useful tool to them because it will ensure that information about people is handled in a responsible way. It also gives people authority over how their information is handled. The privacy legislation also regulates how the personal information is dealt with by the organization (Kobsa, 2001). A suitable method of how to disseminate the privacy policy of Express Books to relevant stakeholders Dissemination of the privacy policy means that the information about the privacy policy is given out to some stakeholders. One way by doing this is by making a copy of the privacy policy that the organization has made and giving it to the stakeholders who the organization thinks are important to have it or in some cases that stakeholders may request to be given the information of the privacy policy (Liston, Lesage, Wilson, Peltonen, Goodnow, 2003). A mechanism used to obtain feedback from stakeholders about the privacy legislation. The current privacy legislation gives agencies and organizations to form their own privacy policy but still adhering to the policies put in place. At Express Books we formed our own privacy policy. To be sure if the privacy policy is suitable to the stakeholders, a feedback from them is usually necessary. One of obtaining the stakeholders feedback is by using questionnaires. These are some examples of questions that might be asked to the stakeholders. Is the private policy put in place good and suitable? If no, then give an opinion to how it can be made good and suitable. What are some of the ways in which you think an organization can best disclose personal information? What are some of the ways that the organization can use to improve the quality of the personal information they have? Privacy Policy for Express Books It is our duty as Express Books to ensure that the personal information of our stakeholders are protected and are used for the correct purposes. The following Privacy Policy for Express Books shows their conduct of privacy. The Privacy Policy is mainly for the information collected by Express Books from their stakeholders. It contains the following: What considerations the organization takes for personal information privacy. The type of methods used by the organization to collection personal information and the reason for preferring such methods. How the organization deals with personal information for instance disclosure of personal information. What measures the organization takes to make sure that the information they have is of quality. How the organization gives access to their confidential information and corrects the information available. Consideration of personal information privacy It is our as Express Books to ensure that we manage the personal information in a transparent way. This is to make sure that our stakeholders have confidence in us in how we handle their personal information. We ensure this by complying with the Australian Privacy Principles and also by keeping our privacy policy up to date. Collection of personal information We always make sure that the collection of information is authorized by the Australian Law court and is only done when it is necessary. Furthermore, the information is only collected after the individuals content. Only sensitive information is only collected. Other personal information may be collected only if relevant. We will notify an individual of the collection of their information following these purposes; to get the identity and contact details of the individual, when the individual is not aware of the collection process, when the information is collected from someone other than the individual and when the collection process is authorized by the Australian law court (Bronitt Stellios, 2006). Dealing with personal information This is one important area that we normally take keen interest. Before we use or disclose any personal information, we will make sure that the owner of the information has consented to it and the use or disclosure of the personal information is authorized by the Australian Law court. Person information will never be used for direct marketing. Though there are some exceptions for example if an individual agrees for his or her personal information to be used for such a purpose or we collected the information from the individual him or herself. Regarding the use or disclosure of government related identifiers, we will not disclose or use the government related identifier of an individual unless an individual consents to it (Pearson, Charlesworth, 2009) Integrity of personal information This entails qualities and integrity of personal information. We will take measures to make sure that the information we receive are correct, up to date, complete and relevant. We will also ensure that we protect the information we have. We will try at all cost to avoid the wrong use of information, keep the information from getting lost and being interfered with. The access, disclosure, use and correction of personal information will only be done under disclosure. Access to and correction of personal information Once we have received the personal information then attain the full ownership to it. Thus we have control to determine who can and cannot access it. On the request by the individual, we will give him or her access to his or her own personal information. Though due to the freedom act or other acts that provide access by persons to documents, we may deny an individual access to information if we are authorized or required to do so. In dealing with request for access, we will respond to the request after a period of time and give access as to how it has been requested. We will charge the individual for the access to information. In regarding correction of personal information, we will always make corrections to the information to make it as accurate as possible and up to date with the current situations. We will the individual of the correction made unless it is not lawful to do so. The corrections will be done only if it necessary, hence in some cases we may refuse the request made by the individual for correction. The privacy policy is to give the very best to the stakeholders of Express Books and the organization itself. It is lawful for both Express Books and its stakeholders to comply with the privacy policy. References Bronitt, S. and Stellios, J., 2006. Regulating Telecommunications Interception and Access in the Twenty first Century: Technological Evolution or Legal Revolution? 1. Prometheus, 24(4), pp.413-428. Kobsa, A., 2001. Tailoring Privacy to Users Needs 1. In User Modeling 2001 (pp. 301-313). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Liston, A., Lesage, S., Wilson, J., Peltonen, L. and Goodnow, C.C., 2003. Aire regulates negative selection of organ-specific T cells. Nature immunology, 4(4), pp.350-354. Milberg, S.J., Smith, H.J. and Burke, S.J., 2000. Information privacy: Corporate management and national regulation. Organization science, 11(1), pp.35-57. Pearson, S. and Charlesworth, A., 2009. Accountability as a way forward for privacy protection in the cloud. In Cloud computing (pp. 131-144). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.