Location Information as Personal Information, to Better Protect Privacy

Abstract

Privacy is not protected as a common law right, and neither as a right under the Australian constitution. Given this, the chapter discusses the courts views on the statutory definition of personal information and highlights the issues that are still to be addressed to better protect privacy—whether the various categories of big location data can be considered as personal information when data aggregation occurs, and the impact on privacy.

The major difference between how content and location information are treated, despite them both dealing with information that may be personal and sensitive, is not justifiable. The Agencies can collect personal information based on their sole judgment for reactive and proactive investigations and other uses that are remotely linked to other functions or activities of the Agencies, whereas for other types of personal information such as the contents of a voice call, a Judge’s prior approval is required. The investigatory powers are broad, and their limits are hard to determine.

After the discussion of the circumstances under which location information can be considered personal and sensitive information, the chapter critically discusses the use of aggregated location information ‘in connection with’ or ‘directly related’ to the activities of the Agencies. This analysis sketches the privacy and governance challenges posed using BD software to analyse and use location information.