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Australian welfare recipient’s data released to counter public criticism

73 points by kerno 10y ago

devurandom_ 10y ago
The power corporations are accumulating with information on intimate customer behavior and the glacial response of society to this is a daily refrain on HN. Has anyone seen a comprehensive, or at least collected, list of canonical examples of strong arguments for: * Raising awareness amongst non-technical folks that such incredible stocking up of PII can raise complicated ethical risks? * Giving legislative representatives practical and defensible reasons to not just go with the flow and actually have a chance to offer smart legislative options without being shot down? This particular example is alarming - I can picture plenty of corporations that wouldn't mind the idea of "customer service" representatives casually raising the prospect of releasing customer PII in order to "show their side of the story" as leverage in situations where a customer is threatening to go to an Ombudsman or other public forum.
- sundvor 10y ago
  On top of all the complete and utterly ... WRONG ... things that Centrelink have been doing lately, a billion dollar entity attacking a single, disadvantaged person furthers the depths of the inethical behaviours at display by the Australian government. The list of wrong things include knowingly issuing pay-us-back-or-we'll-empty-your-bank-account legal notices incorrectly, when they clearly averaged e.g. a single high payment month over the whole period when the rules state this is not to be done. Then saying just call us, knowing the call wait lines are so horrid it is a whole day project just to get in touch with anyone. I'm so over this government.
- tankenmate 10y ago
  Centrelink is a government body; it is the public facing segment of the federal social security system in Australia.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  In this case, it's actually a government agency accumulating data on people who voluntarily choose to collect free money/free stuff from said agency. https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/dhs/centrelink https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/dhs/centrelink I see no evidence that Centrelink collects any data on people who don't approach it with their hand out.
vacri 10y ago
It is beyond bizarre that their own legal counsel approved the release, especially since they're also under the spotlight at the moment. I'm not sure how they expect to 'maintain public trust by showing their side of the story' when that involves violating privacy.
yazbo_mcclure 10y ago
Australia Australia we love you Australia
cyberferret 10y ago
No doubting the veracity of this occurrence, but it is baffling that it happened nonetheless - federal government departments here (Australia) are usually cautious to a paranoid level when it comes to people even looking at information. I remember cases when curious internal staff members at the tax and social security offices being sacked on the spot for merely doing searches on celebrity names without due reason. Both my sisters work in law enforcement agencies, and tell me that their every action on their computer systems is tracked and logged. Once when my younger sister worked in the Traffic infringement section of the local police department, I asked her to check up if I was actually pinged by a remote speed camera that morning as I suspected I was. She refused, on the grounds that any such searches were tracked, and if it was found she did a search against a vehicle belonging to a close family member, it would trigger an internal investigation by the ethics team.
- josephg 10y ago
  I'm an Australian who lived a couple of years in the Bay Area. The views people hold toward privacy was one of the most surprising cultural differences between our countries. As an outsider I was shocked to learn that privacy really is an afterthought for a lot of bay area residents. US anecdote: a product I worked on had a feature which needs full access to a customer's email account to use. The feature scrapes their inbox and can send emails impersonating our customers' staff. I said there was no way I'd use that feature, but it proved to be super popular! People had no problem handing over access to their entire (work) email account to a startup. Australia anecdote: When my uncle died we needed to hunt down his bank details. The banks (by law) weren't allowed to even tell us if he was one of their customers without seeing his death certificate and our documentation. I'm now way more nervous about trusting US based startups with my data. Its not just that many of the engineers are inexperienced, and most startups don't have any security expertise. Its also that culturally I know they probably don't understand personal privacy. I can't trust that they'll protect my data if they might not bother protecting their own.
  - mdpopescu 10y ago
    I worked on a financial product based on one of Intuit's. I was shocked to realize that this Intuit product was impersonating people (using their username and password) to log on to their bank accounts and download all transactions - which our product was then analyzing. I was sure nobody would allow that; who will give a third-party their bank username and password? I was extremely surprised to find out that the answer was "at least tens of thousands of people".
yosamino 10y ago
This is a good example of why the "I don't have anything to hide" argument is incorrect. That way of thinking only works as long as your goals and positions are aligned with the entity collecting information about you to begin with. If they're not, or the situation changes, imbalances of information lead to disadvantages for you pretty quickly. All it took was some bureaucrat feeling petty.
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  Not only in alignment with some entity collecting the information, in alignment with every entity that might ever look at the information -- for the rest of your life.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    This is the strongest point. Not having anything you're ashamed of does not mean not having anything to hide - it's all too possible for completely harmless traits like ethnicity and sexuality to become targets for someone else.
    - nkrisc 10y ago
      Your actions may be legal now, but that may not always be the case. You may be protected from retroactive prosecution now, but that may not always be the case. Data doesn't just go away.
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      The most scary aspect is that if I know everything about you, I can frame you for a crime for which you will have no alibi, or threaten to in exchange for you doing what I ask. The second was a tactic often used by the Stasi to create more operatives - call someone in for questioning, accuse them of a crime for which they have no alibi, such as spying, and when they protest their innocence, ask them to help the government with something to show their good faith. That something could easily be to provide a pretext for arresting the real target.
briane80 10y ago
This story follows a pattern of coordinated attacks on public services in The Guardian and other left leaning media outlets. Usually with the agenda of demanding more money and funding. No doubt, mistakes happen in large bureaucracies but the story is usually slanted as some evil agency trying to destroy certain 'marginalised' sections of society. Whereas the truth is probably nothing like that. I cannot help but think it is agenda pushing, distortion of facts and playing on emotions. Read the woman's original article and see the emotional language and phrases used. I think it says a lot about the intent of these media pieces. Read the linked Centrelinks response and several things are refuted, so why in these comments is there an automatic pile on one side?
- yosamino 10y ago
  I think I can't quite follow your argument. Did you mean that the Guardian is trying to demand funding from someone, and they think they'll get this through this story somehow ? Would you mind explaining ? > No doubt, mistakes happen in large bureaucracies but the story is usually slanted as some evil agency trying to destroy certain 'marginalised' sections of society. Whereas the truth is probably nothing like that. The truth is that as an individual, especially one from a marginalized section of society, you are up against a powerful bureaucracy that has the ability to completely screw up your life, by mistake or not. So we as a society depend on holding these bureaucracies to very high standards. It is also true that in any large bureaucracy, mistakes inevitably happen from time to time. One would wish for a leadership of said bureaucracy to handle these mistakes with integrity and from a position of confidence. By, for example, contacting this women directly, quietly resolving this issue and then adding this problem to the yearly statistics to prove you run a good ship. Who knows, this woman might have written a blog post singing your praises, after you resolved her problem for her. Certainly the better PR strategy. If, on the other hand, you resolve to attacking your clients in public, violating their privacy rights in the process, then maybe you're too close to running an evil, rather than a responsible agency. > Read the linked Centrelinks response and several things are refuted, so why in these comments is there an automatic pile on one side? Did you read the refutation of the refutation as well ? I found the article presents the different viewpoints quite well. Including that this sort of pressure is able to stir up strong emotions.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
In the event that this release was illegal, I really do feel for the people at the agency. Someone made public false allegations about them and they are legally forbidden from proving that person wrong. It's a tough position to be in. I don't have a good solution to this, but I do think that there should be a legal way to prove a person is lying if they directly make accusations about you. After all, they are the one who made the situation public, not you.
- jbapple 10y ago
  > there should be a legal way to prove a person is lying if they directly make accusations about you. "about you"? Her article did not name or provide identifying information about any individual employee of Centrelink.
  - prawn 10y ago
    Doesn't Australian defamation law only apply to organisations below a certain size? (15 employees or FTE - something like that.)
    - sjwright 10y ago
      Fewer than 10 employees and not related to any other corporation. The relevant section: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/da200599/s9.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/da200599/s... (This is the New South Wales legislation but it's almost perfectly uniform in all states and territories.)
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    In my post, "you" refers to the corporate person that is the Centrelink government agency (and implicitly the humans behind that corporate person), about which false allegations were made. Is there some meaningful distinction here that means false allegations about an organization of humans should go unrefuted, but false allegations about a single human should be refuted?

73 points by kerno 10y ago

The power corporations are accumulating with information on intimate customer behavior and the glacial response of society to this is a daily refrain on HN. Has anyone seen a comprehensive, or at least collected, list of canonical examples of strong arguments for: * Raising awareness amongst non-technical folks that such incredible stocking up of PII can raise complicated ethical risks? * Giving legislative representatives practical and defensible reasons to not just go with the flow and actually have a chance to offer smart legislative options without being shot down? This particular example is alarming - I can picture plenty of corporations that wouldn't mind the idea of "customer service" representatives casually raising the prospect of releasing customer PII in order to "show their side of the story" as leverage in situations where a customer is threatening to go to an Ombudsman or other public forum.

sundvor 10y ago
On top of all the complete and utterly ... WRONG ... things that Centrelink have been doing lately, a billion dollar entity attacking a single, disadvantaged person furthers the depths of the inethical behaviours at display by the Australian government. The list of wrong things include knowingly issuing pay-us-back-or-we'll-empty-your-bank-account legal notices incorrectly, when they clearly averaged e.g. a single high payment month over the whole period when the rules state this is not to be done. Then saying just call us, knowing the call wait lines are so horrid it is a whole day project just to get in touch with anyone. I'm so over this government.
tankenmate 10y ago
Centrelink is a government body; it is the public facing segment of the federal social security system in Australia.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
In this case, it's actually a government agency accumulating data on people who voluntarily choose to collect free money/free stuff from said agency. https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/dhs/centrelink https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/dhs/centrelink I see no evidence that Centrelink collects any data on people who don't approach it with their hand out.

vacri 10y ago

It is beyond bizarre that their own legal counsel approved the release, especially since they're also under the spotlight at the moment. I'm not sure how they expect to 'maintain public trust by showing their side of the story' when that involves violating privacy.

yazbo_mcclure 10y ago

Australia Australia we love you Australia

cyberferret 10y ago

No doubting the veracity of this occurrence, but it is baffling that it happened nonetheless - federal government departments here (Australia) are usually cautious to a paranoid level when it comes to people even looking at information. I remember cases when curious internal staff members at the tax and social security offices being sacked on the spot for merely doing searches on celebrity names without due reason. Both my sisters work in law enforcement agencies, and tell me that their every action on their computer systems is tracked and logged. Once when my younger sister worked in the Traffic infringement section of the local police department, I asked her to check up if I was actually pinged by a remote speed camera that morning as I suspected I was. She refused, on the grounds that any such searches were tracked, and if it was found she did a search against a vehicle belonging to a close family member, it would trigger an internal investigation by the ethics team.

josephg 10y ago
I'm an Australian who lived a couple of years in the Bay Area. The views people hold toward privacy was one of the most surprising cultural differences between our countries. As an outsider I was shocked to learn that privacy really is an afterthought for a lot of bay area residents. US anecdote: a product I worked on had a feature which needs full access to a customer's email account to use. The feature scrapes their inbox and can send emails impersonating our customers' staff. I said there was no way I'd use that feature, but it proved to be super popular! People had no problem handing over access to their entire (work) email account to a startup. Australia anecdote: When my uncle died we needed to hunt down his bank details. The banks (by law) weren't allowed to even tell us if he was one of their customers without seeing his death certificate and our documentation. I'm now way more nervous about trusting US based startups with my data. Its not just that many of the engineers are inexperienced, and most startups don't have any security expertise. Its also that culturally I know they probably don't understand personal privacy. I can't trust that they'll protect my data if they might not bother protecting their own.
- mdpopescu 10y ago
  I worked on a financial product based on one of Intuit's. I was shocked to realize that this Intuit product was impersonating people (using their username and password) to log on to their bank accounts and download all transactions - which our product was then analyzing. I was sure nobody would allow that; who will give a third-party their bank username and password? I was extremely surprised to find out that the answer was "at least tens of thousands of people".

yosamino 10y ago

This is a good example of why the "I don't have anything to hide" argument is incorrect. That way of thinking only works as long as your goals and positions are aligned with the entity collecting information about you to begin with. If they're not, or the situation changes, imbalances of information lead to disadvantages for you pretty quickly. All it took was some bureaucrat feeling petty.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
Not only in alignment with some entity collecting the information, in alignment with every entity that might ever look at the information -- for the rest of your life.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  This is the strongest point. Not having anything you're ashamed of does not mean not having anything to hide - it's all too possible for completely harmless traits like ethnicity and sexuality to become targets for someone else.
  - nkrisc 10y ago
    Your actions may be legal now, but that may not always be the case. You may be protected from retroactive prosecution now, but that may not always be the case. Data doesn't just go away.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    The most scary aspect is that if I know everything about you, I can frame you for a crime for which you will have no alibi, or threaten to in exchange for you doing what I ask. The second was a tactic often used by the Stasi to create more operatives - call someone in for questioning, accuse them of a crime for which they have no alibi, such as spying, and when they protest their innocence, ask them to help the government with something to show their good faith. That something could easily be to provide a pretext for arresting the real target.

briane80 10y ago

This story follows a pattern of coordinated attacks on public services in The Guardian and other left leaning media outlets. Usually with the agenda of demanding more money and funding. No doubt, mistakes happen in large bureaucracies but the story is usually slanted as some evil agency trying to destroy certain 'marginalised' sections of society. Whereas the truth is probably nothing like that. I cannot help but think it is agenda pushing, distortion of facts and playing on emotions. Read the woman's original article and see the emotional language and phrases used. I think it says a lot about the intent of these media pieces. Read the linked Centrelinks response and several things are refuted, so why in these comments is there an automatic pile on one side?

yosamino 10y ago
I think I can't quite follow your argument. Did you mean that the Guardian is trying to demand funding from someone, and they think they'll get this through this story somehow ? Would you mind explaining ? > No doubt, mistakes happen in large bureaucracies but the story is usually slanted as some evil agency trying to destroy certain 'marginalised' sections of society. Whereas the truth is probably nothing like that. The truth is that as an individual, especially one from a marginalized section of society, you are up against a powerful bureaucracy that has the ability to completely screw up your life, by mistake or not. So we as a society depend on holding these bureaucracies to very high standards. It is also true that in any large bureaucracy, mistakes inevitably happen from time to time. One would wish for a leadership of said bureaucracy to handle these mistakes with integrity and from a position of confidence. By, for example, contacting this women directly, quietly resolving this issue and then adding this problem to the yearly statistics to prove you run a good ship. Who knows, this woman might have written a blog post singing your praises, after you resolved her problem for her. Certainly the better PR strategy. If, on the other hand, you resolve to attacking your clients in public, violating their privacy rights in the process, then maybe you're too close to running an evil, rather than a responsible agency. > Read the linked Centrelinks response and several things are refuted, so why in these comments is there an automatic pile on one side? Did you read the refutation of the refutation as well ? I found the article presents the different viewpoints quite well. Including that this sort of pressure is able to stir up strong emotions.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

In the event that this release was illegal, I really do feel for the people at the agency. Someone made public false allegations about them and they are legally forbidden from proving that person wrong. It's a tough position to be in. I don't have a good solution to this, but I do think that there should be a legal way to prove a person is lying if they directly make accusations about you. After all, they are the one who made the situation public, not you.

jbapple 10y ago
> there should be a legal way to prove a person is lying if they directly make accusations about you. "about you"? Her article did not name or provide identifying information about any individual employee of Centrelink.
- prawn 10y ago
  Doesn't Australian defamation law only apply to organisations below a certain size? (15 employees or FTE - something like that.)
  - sjwright 10y ago
    Fewer than 10 employees and not related to any other corporation. The relevant section: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/da200599/s9.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/da200599/s... (This is the New South Wales legislation but it's almost perfectly uniform in all states and territories.)
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  In my post, "you" refers to the corporate person that is the Centrelink government agency (and implicitly the humans behind that corporate person), about which false allegations were made. Is there some meaningful distinction here that means false allegations about an organization of humans should go unrefuted, but false allegations about a single human should be refuted?