…. On Saturday The Age revealed that Victoria Police had agreed to hand over to Aquasure, the international consortium building a desalination plant near Wonthaggi, information about people involved in protests against the plant. In a 20-page memorandum of understanding, signed in August by Assistant Commissioner Paul Evans and the secretary of the Department of Sustainability and Environment, Peter Harris, the police agreed to release to Aquasure ”law-enforcement data” in the form of ”any text, images, audio and video … and includes (but is not limited to) data related to individuals, aggregated data, written reports and correspondence, memoranda, police diaries, official notebooks, running sheets and other data repositories”. In other words, anything at all.
Astonishingly, when asked about this memorandum, a spokeswoman for the department said that such agreements were common for major projects, and that ”the sharing of information will be done without breaching privacy laws”. This was evidently news to Victoria’s Privacy Commissioner, Helen Versey, who yesterday issued a terse statement announcing that she was ”not aware that Victoria Police had entered into this memorandum of understanding or other MoUs in relationship to major infrastructure projects”. Ms Versey said she was seeking an urgent briefing from the police and the department, as well she might.
Read more in the Brisbane Times.
Oh dear, someone needs to be in touch with the Victorian Privacy Commissioner.