Ben Fairless
Joined Right to Know in 2013
I work for the OpenAustralia Foundation. I used to use this account when I was administering the site however now I use this account just to make requests and to provide suggestions to people.
All my requests are made in a personal capacity, and not on behalf of Right to Know, the OpenAustralia Foundation, or any other organisation unless specifically indicated.
Sign in to change password, subscriptions and more (Ben Fairless only)
This person's Freedom of Information requests (approximately 470) (page 9)
Dear Mr Fairless.
Please find enclosed a Notice pursuant to s24AB of the Freedom of
Information Act 1982.
Regards
François Murat
Senio...
"H" endorsement - Tests and answers
Successful.
Hi my name is Neil, as regards the online free test, this website the answers seem to have run away. I have done this test countless times, only to be...
UNCLASSIFIED
Dear Mr Fairless,
We attempted to issue a decision to you as seen below, and received an
automated notification that the email wa...
FOI Extensions of time
Response by Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications to Ben Fairless on .
Information not held.
Dear Mr Fairless
Please see the attached decision on your request for access.
Kind regards
FOI Officer | Governance and Performance
Governance Un...
Request for mobile communications via mobile applications
Response by Minister for Home Affairs to Ben Fairless on .
Awaiting internal review.
** This is an automated response. Please do not reply to this email **
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Your email has been received by the Department of...
Correspondence Related to “The Juice Media”
Response by Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to Ben Fairless on .
Partially successful.
UNCLASSIFIED
Hi Ben,
Please find attached your decision pack for FOI/2017/148 relating to The
Juice Media.
Kind regards,
Dr Me...
Communciations related to Right to Know
Response by Australian Taxation Office to Ben Fairless on .
Refused.
Dear FOI Applicant,
Please see attachment.
Yours faithfully,
FOI Team
Dear Applicant,
A notice regarding your FOI request is located...
Use of janusSEAL and Correspondence around same
Response by Department of Home Affairs to Ben Fairless on .
Partially successful.
UNCLASSIFIED
Our references: FA 16/11/00189-R1; ADF2016/65920
Dear Mr Fairless
I refer to your application for an Internal Review receive...
Failure of ICT systems
Awaiting internal review.
The latest reply from the ATO says, "On 23 June 2017, you were issued a notice of intention to refuse your FOI request as a ‘practical
refusal reason’...
Ridiculous calculation of charges that have no legitimate basis in fact, but are a thinly guised attempt to unlawfully frustrate access, are unfortunat...
Applying a full s 47C - Deliberative Matter exemption on a document relating to a policy on administrative access to AFP documents only makes sense if...
Customers recording interactions 104-07020060
Waiting clarification.
This comment is a repetition, in part, of a comment I made here: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/ministerial_briefing_for_alan_tu#comment-1779...
Dear Mr Fairless,
The information you have requested is available on our website at
[1]https://www.ato.gov.au/assets/0/104/997/1030/543d6162-0b09...
Requests made via Right to Know
Follow up sent to Australian Taxation Office by Ben Fairless on .
Awaiting internal review.
I do not consent to withdraw the request. I seek information up to the date of the recent OAIC decision which I don't believe has been released....
Administrative/Informal access Arrangements
Response by South Australia Police to Ben Fairless on .
Long overdue.
Request for mobile communications via mobile applications
Response by Minister for Defence to Ben Fairless on .
Information not held.
UNCLASSIFIED
Good afternoon Mr Fairless,
I refer to your email dated 19 October 2016 where you sought access to
inbound and outbound chats sent to...
Average Hold Data for 2016
Refused.
I don't think the Department is correct here.
23 hours seems excessive to write a SQL script to dump aggregated records from a database, let alone to...
Thanks for coming back to me so quickly, much appreciated.
Yours sincerely,
Ben Fairless
Administrative/Informal access Arrangements
Response by Queensland Police Service to Ben Fairless on .
Partially successful.
Good Afternoon Mr Fairless
You have not provided a telephone number to respond to, hence I am replying my email.
Information on how to apply for inf...
Administrative/Informal access Arrangements
Response by Western Australia Police to Ben Fairless on .
Partially successful.
Good afternoon Ben
WA Police does not have any internal guidelines or procedures on what information can be released without a formal access applicati...
Administrative/Informal access Arrangements
Response by Tasmania Police to Ben Fairless on .
Partially successful.
Dear Mr Fairless,
Information relating to your query can be found at police.tas.gov.au >
Information Disclosure.
Regards,
John D...
Administrative/Informal access Arrangements
Response by Victoria Police to Ben Fairless on .
Successful.
Dear Mr Fairless
I should explain that the role of the Freedom of Information Division for Victoria Police is to receive and process requests made und...
Administrative/Informal access Arrangements
Response by NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services to Ben Fairless on .
Successful.
Good morning Ben,
I refer you to our website, see below link:
http://www.pfes.nt.gov.au/Access-to-information.aspx
I hope this is of assistance to yo...
Administrative Access Arrangements
Information not held.
Hi Locutus,
I don't think the department is saying they can't find anything. It looks more like, to me anyway, that they are saying 'which administra...
Centrelink New Data Matching System
Response by Services Australia to Ben Fairless on .
Waiting clarification.
Dear Mr Fairless,
Thank you for your email.
The department is under an obligation to protect the identity of third parties to be consulted under sect...
This person's 338 annotations (page 9)
SEDNode User Guide
Refused.
My rights of review have expired (this was in October 2014) so there isn't a way for me to seek review of the decision.
If someone else was to reques...
Obama's G20 accommodation invoices / receipts
Request to Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet by Culley Palmer. Annotated by Ben Fairless on .
Information not held.
Hey Culley,
It depends. If you reply to a specific inbound email from the agency, it will go back to that email address. If you simply write a reply,...
There is ZERO obligation to complete a form for an FOI request at the Federal Level. In fact, Right to Know is specifically mentioned under the Informa...
SEDNode User Guide
Refused.
Welcome! Annotations are great for asking questions, seeking advice, or helping others out with requests, so you've done the right thing by using them....
Hi Culley,
Just so you know, the ABC is a bit special when it comes to FOI. They aren't obliged to release any information that's "Program Material"....
Gamma International's FinFisher
Information not held.
At the request of Culley Palmer, I've updated the name of this request from Documents mentioning WikiLeaks to Gamma International's FinFisher.
Thanks...
Gamma International's FinFisher
Information not held.
When states are added to RTK (coming soon hopefully!) you'll have a few more places you can send your request :)
Illegal Mind Research
Refused.
Welcome to Right to Know!
There is no longer a Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, however the FOI address for the old Minister for Mental Health...
Information Regarding to the Sydney Gang Rapes 2000
Information not held.
Hi Samantha,
Welcome to Right to Know!
Just a heads up, it is likely this request will be refused as a formal FOI request as you can only request "...
Gamma International's FinFisher
Information not held.
You should mark a request how you felt it was handled. It's a bit weird legally, but the Department has to either Provide documents or refuse a request...
I just read ‘ER’ and Special Broadcasting Service [2015] AICmr 12 (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/AICmr/2015/12.html) where the information Com...
Documents relating to the Australian Olympic stilnox scandal
Information not held.
It turns out we had the wrong address for the Minister for Sport in Right to Know, so I've resent it to the correct address and told the Agency who it...
Details of goods & services provided under tender contract number CN2309741
Request to Office of the Official Secretary to the Governor-General by Paul Wakeford. Annotated by Ben Fairless on .
Successful.
So they spent $19,602.00 on iPads. Assuming they got them at retail rate, you could by 22 iPad Air 2 (WiFi, 128GB) for that price! If they were being s...
Gamma International's FinFisher
Information not held.
You will normally get the opportunity to put a case forward for processing fees if the Agency determines that you are required to pay them.
I would w...
Information regarding the budget for public schools and privet schools in 2014
Request to Assistant Minister for Education and Training by Nathan Davies. Annotated by Ben Fairless on .
Information not held.
I've found a new address for the Assistant Minister of Education and Training and resent the request to that address.
Ben.
Retired politicians pensions & benifits.
Information not held.
Hi John,
You replied to an email you received from Right to Know, not to the Annotation itself.
To reply to a request, or to add an annotation, you...
Operational Information - FCSO
Successful.
Hey Henare,
The site I'm looking at is http://operational.humanservices.gov.au
Cheers
Ben
Australians killed in Yemen by US Drones
Partially successful.
Hi Culley,
You can update the status of the request at the bottom of the request (under the heading "Culley Palmer only:"). You will then get the gre...
Hopefully it will be collected this week, as for uploading it it depends on the format the CD is in.
Cheers,
Ben
Right to Know Volunteer
Australia's Worst White-Collar Crime
Request to Australian Prudential Regulation Authority by Phillip Sweeney. Annotated by Ben Fairless on .
Awaiting internal review.
@Vera, they have said that it's solely search and retrieval time.
I would assume it's easy to make a decision because the documents will almost cert...
There are 2 types of exemptions - Division 2 and Division 3.
s.33 to 47A are fully exempt. The agency doesn't need to prove its against the public in...
Maybe remove the exclusion you put on for plain text emails, and see what you catch with that?
External Lawyers are commonplace throughout government...
Anti-discrimination in Recruitment
Request to Department of Education, Skills and Employment by Julie Bingo. Annotated by Ben Fairless on .
Waiting clarification.
Julie, I absolutely agree with you, however from experience I've noticed that agencies are reluctant to respond to informal requests for information, i...
Newman's pension for life
Partially successful.
Alex helped build Right to Know: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/help/credits#thanks
For the first part of your request, it's clear from news reports...
Anti-discrimination in Recruitment
Request to Department of Education, Skills and Employment by Julie Bingo. Annotated by Ben Fairless on .
Waiting clarification.
While the Department isn't restricted from answering your questions, generally "Freedom of Information" or FOI laws only apply to actual documents, not...