Protecting peoples’ data: private, if not secret

People tend to trust government, certainly more than business, with personal on-line information and have a nuanced attitude to digital privacy. “The challenge for governments is to focus on what it means to be competent in protecting privacy, in the context of it being impossible to guarantee complete secrecy,” researchers from the ANU’s National Security College, writing with a university colleague suggest.

Certainly, university staff are trusting, and forgiving, of managements who hold data. The ANU community appeared relaxed last year after reports that the university had been comprehensively hacked. VC Brian Schmidt assured everybody no personal or financial data had been stolen, suggested staff and students change their passwords, and that was about that (CMM July 16).  And when UK HR software provider PageUp announced it was hacked Australian university clients, U Tas, Uni Melbourne and Uni Adelaide were frank and up-front about what happened (CMM June 8) with no apparent campus complaints.

Governments need to, “focus on what it means to be competent in protecting privacy, in the context of it being impossible to guarantee complete secrecy,” Adam Henschke, Ryan Young, Maia Gould and Hannah Smith, write.


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