PRIVACY POLICY IMPLICATIONS IN CONTRACT LAW :

AN ANALYSIS OF THE AUSTRALIAN LAW

KIIT SCHOOL OF LAW

NAME – ANUSHKA DUTTA

FIRST YEAR
SEMESTER 1
BALLB (Hons) SEC A
ROLL NO – 2283031
SUBJECT – LAW OF CONTRACTS
SUBJECT CODE – LW 1011
SUBMITTED TO – Ms. JINIA KUNDU
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, KIIT SCHOOL OF LAW

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to convey my heartfelt gratitude to Ms. Jinia Kundu, assistant

professor of KIIT School of Law, for her tremendous support and assistance in
the completion of my article. I would also like to thank our Director, Dr.
Bhabani Prasad Panda, for providing me with this wonderful opportunity to
work on the article titled Online Privacy Policy Implications on Contract Law:
An Analysis of Australian Law. The completion of the article would not have
been possible without their insights.

ANUSHKA DUTTA

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 CONTENTS

TOPIC PAGE NO

INTRODUCTION 4

RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS 4

HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY ACT 5

AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY PRINCIPLES 6

AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY BILL 6

CHANGES IN THE BILL 7

CONCLUSION 7

BIBLIOGRAPHY 7

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 INTRODUCTION

Australian Privacy Act 1988

The Act and Australian Privacy Principles (‘APPs’) govern the collection,
storage, use and disclosure of Personal Information. Australian businesses are
bound by the Privacy Act 1988 if they handle Personal Information and have $3
million or more in annual turnover or are captured by the second set of criteria
set out in the Act.

RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

These are the following list of the AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY PRINCIPLES:

1. An open and Transparent management of personal information
2. Collection of solicited personal information
3. Notification of collection of personal information
4. Security of personal information
5. Access to personal information
6. Quality of personal information
7. Correction of personal information

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 HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY ACT

The Australian Privacy Act was passed by the Australian Parliament in the year
1988. The act commenced in 1989. It set out 11 information privacy principles
on guidance for Australian Government on handling personal information.
There were some expansion in the coverage of the privacy act. Those were:
Spent convictions in 1990
Tax file number data matching in 1990
Medicare and pharmaceutical benefits schemes in 1991
Credit Reporting in 1991
Australian Capital Territory in 1994
Telecommunications in 1997
Office of the Privacy Commissioner in 2000
Private Sector in 2001
Anti money laundering and counter terrorism in 2006
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in 2010
Healthcare identifiers 2010
Norfolk Island in 2011
Personal property security register 2012
Electronic health records 2012
Some major privacy reforms in 2014
ACT privacy reforms in 2014
The notifiable data breaches scheme in 2018

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 AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY PRINCIPLES

The Privacy Act provides 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

The APPs apply to government agencies and private sector organisations with
an annual turnover of $3 million or more. The APPs are principles-based—
protecting privacy while not burdening agencies and organisations with
inflexible prescriptive rules.
The APPs deal with all stages of the processing of personal information, setting
out standards for the collection, use, disclosure, quality and security of
personal information and provide obligations on agencies and organisations
subject to the Privacy Act concerning access to, and correction of, an
individual's own personal information.

AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY BILL

The Australian Government has undertaken a broad review of Australia’s

Privacy legislation. The Government has proposed major reforms that could
substantially alter the regulatory landscape , especially the online privacy
policy. The Online Privacy Bill proposes to strengthen the existing provisions of
the Federal Privacy Act 1988 by better protecting against the misuse of
personal information by social media companies, data brokerage companies
and other large online platforms. The proposed changes under the Online
Privacy Bill impact not just Australian businesses, but also foreign organisations
who carry on business in Australia. The Online Privacy Bill proposes to clarify
an existing aspect of the Privacy Act which can be a common source of
confusion, being to what extent the Privacy Act applies extraterritorially.

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 CHANGES IN THE BILL

The introduction of the Online Privacy Code (OP CODE) to better

regulate social media and online platforms that collect or trade in
personal information and updating the enforcement powers of the
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), by allowing
for wider investigative powers and steeper penalties for breaches of the
Privacy Act and clarifying the extraterritorial scope of the Privacy Act, to
make it clear that foreign businesses who carry on a business in Australia
must meet the obligations under the Privacy Act, even if they do not
collect or hold Australians’ information directly from a source in
Australia.

CONCLUSION

So the conclusion is that privacy policy covers what kind of personal and
sensitive information are collected and why they are collected and how they
are handles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/the-privacy-act
https://www.ag.gov.au/rights-and-protections/privacy
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=49858a9e-8469-4268-b259-
5e1ed986b228