Dear Ms Teague
I understand you have sought internal review of a decision made by Ms Pamela Longstaff, Head of Corporate Government & FOI Coordinator, as per your email below.
The internal review decision is due to be provided to you on Monday 16 August 2021, being 30 days since your request was received. Unfortunately there has been a delay in conducting the review due to workloads. I anticipate that a decision will be provided to you by 30 August 2021. I apologise for the inconvenience.
Kind regards
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-----Original Message-----
From: Vanessa Teague <[FOI #7511 email]>
Sent: Friday, 16 July 2021 8:59 PM
To: FOI ABC <[ABC request email]>
Subject: Internal review of Freedom of Information request - iView data sharing agreements
Dear Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Australian Broadcasting Corporation's handling of my FOI request 'iView data sharing agreements'.
I do not accept that the documents are covered by a "necessary quality of confidentiality" merely because they contain confidentiality clauses, i.e. the parties agreed to keep them secret. If this line of reasoning were valid, then any agreement made by a public authority could remain confidential, no matter how gravely opposed to the public interest, only because the parties to that contract had undertaken to keep it so. Public authorities and corporations making arrangements against the public interest are most likely to want to keep them confidential.
I do not believe the information could have been exchanged with an "understanding of confidence" when the ABC is constrained by APP1 - 'to manage personal information in an open and transparent way.’ It is not credible to suggest that the receiving parties, Google, Facebook and others, did not realise that the people whose data was being given to them would wish to know the nature of the data sharing arrangement.
Finally, I question the overly broad use of the term 'cause detriment.' While I agree that exposure of inappropriate, irresponsible or corrupt behaviour may cause detriment to specific individuals or corporations, I do not believe that is the intended interpretation of that clause. Publication of these contracts would not cause detriment unless there is something embarrassing to hide - even then, it would not cause detriment to the community as a whole.
The publication of these data sharing arrangements has tremendous public benefits. First, it informs ordinary iView viewers of how their data is being shared, hence giving them some opportunity to protect themselves from some of its harmful consequences. Second, it allows technical experts like me to examine the accuracy of the privacy policy. I am concerned that there may be misconceptions about the strength of technical privacy protections. For example, the privacy policy's mention of a 'hash of the email address' suggests that the inadequacy of hashing as a technical privacy protection has not been understood. If the technical protections promised in the data sharing contracts do not in fact meet the promises of the ABC's privacy policy, then the ABC needs to find out urgently. Opening the data sharing contracts for independent review would be one way to do so.
I encourage you to reconsider your refusal.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/iview_data_sharing_agreements__;!!FvZmfVE!VvC0PuDtVFIlb18wUMinbeICg0w0kLC6eYtpfQfY9diwuSg2QpsML6a0lh0pwYs$
Yours faithfully,
Vanessa Teague
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