Nick Abrahams and Warwick Andersen comment:
The right to privacy is on the front page everywhere. But it was not always so. The last time privacy was this hot was during the late nineties/early 2000s, when many of the world’s developed countries, including Australia, enacted legislation protecting an individual’s right to privacy.
However, with the occurrence of 9/11, the privacy advocates lost traction as governments enacted strongly worded legislation to track terrorists and the prevailing mood of the populace was that privacy was secondary to catching terrorists.
Privacy has been off prime time. The Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2008 report into privacy reform barely made media mention, despite its comprehensive two year investigations and 2500 pages. The Rudd government partially responded to the ALRC report with draft legislation in mid-2010 around the same time as the release of the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz shocker Knight and Day.
Significantly more attention was paid to the far fetched storyline of the Cruise/Diaz vehicle than the proposed new privacy laws. But not anymore.
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