Department | Jotup

Annual report highlights ’s work to uphold privacy and information access rights

Retrieved on:

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Releasing the OAIC’s annual report for 2022–23, Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk said the volatile events of the financial year had underscored the need for the regulator to have the right foundations in place to promote and protect information access and privacy rights.

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Releasing the OAIC’s annual report for 2022–23, Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk said the volatile events of the financial year had underscored the need for the regulator to have the right foundations in place to promote and protect information access and privacy rights.
“Throughout the year, the OAIC has continued to develop and advocate for these foundations to support a proportionate and proactive approach to regulation.
This includes appropriate laws, resources, capability – the right people with the right tools – effective engagement with risk, appropriate governance and, importantly, collaboration,” Commissioner Falk said.
Investigations were also opened into the personal information handling practices of retailers Bunnings and Kmart, focusing on the companies’ use of facial recognition technology.
“The OAIC has a strong foundation on which to build, and it will move from strength to strength with the leadership of 3 expert commissioners.”
Read the
OAIC Annual report 2022–23.

Key 2022–23 statistics

Footnotes

[1] During 2022-23, the OAIC ceased classifying certain communications about FOI as ‘enquiries’ where these are more complex, or require a specific response, and are therefore dealt with by the FOI Branch instead of the OAIC’s enquiries team. This has reduced the numbers of FOI enquiries reported this financial year.

FTC and Wisconsin Take Action Against Rhinelander Auto Center for Illegally Discriminating Against American Indian Customers and Charging Unlawful Junk Fees

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

“Working closely with the State of Wisconsin, we are holding these dealerships accountable for discriminating against American Indian customers and sneaking junk fees onto consumers’ bills,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

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“Working closely with the State of Wisconsin, we are holding these dealerships accountable for discriminating against American Indian customers and sneaking junk fees onto consumers’ bills,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
The complaint cites one survey of Rhinelander customers that shows half of the dealer’s customers said they were charged for add-ons without authorization or through deception.
Rhinelander and Towne discriminated against American Indian customers in the cost of financing by adding more “markup” to their interest rates, according to the FTC’s complaint.
This additional markup cost American Indian customers $401 more on average compared to non-Latino white customers.
In addition, the complaint alleges that American Indian customers were charged for unwanted add-ons at a higher rate than non-Latino white customers.

Who tracked UK COVID infections the best at the height of the pandemic? A new study provides the answer

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

We wanted to know which of these methods was the most reliable during the first two years of the pandemic.

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We wanted to know which of these methods was the most reliable during the first two years of the pandemic.
The gold standard surveillance was the Office for National Statistics (ONS) COVID survey.
This data tracked the ONS estimates very closely, though the reported numbers were usually only about 45% of the ONS data.
The Zoe app also tracked the ONS survey estimates closely and was a good estimate of whether infections were rising or falling.
For COVID, the question was can wastewater testing indicate how much infection is present in the population?
In our analysis, we found that counts in wastewater were moderately correlated with the prevalence of COVID in the population.

Useful additional insights

Even so, the other approaches provided useful additional insights.
NHS 111 call and website data provided useful information early in the pandemic, before other surveillance methods were established.
Although wastewater surveillance did little to increase our understanding of the course of the pandemic in England, this surveillance method may be useful in countries that don’t have easy access to human testing.

How smaller businesses can become net-zero influencers and enablers

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Cafes and restaurants are also addressing food-related emissions with carbon labelling schemes and more sustainable menu choices.

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Cafes and restaurants are also addressing food-related emissions with carbon labelling schemes and more sustainable menu choices.
Recruiting smaller businesses to support the drive for net zero makes a lot of sense.
But the decarbonisation of smaller firms has only recently attracted serious attention from policymakers, through initiatives such as the UK Business Climate Hub.
However, as highlighted in a recent study I worked on with colleagues at Oxford and Sheffield Hallam universities, smaller businesses can also help cut emissions as behavioural “influencers” and “enablers” of change.

Persistent challenges and hopeful signs

But all businesses could benefit from a more joined-up support framework to help them achieve their goals.
By contrast, smaller businesses in England have not had access to a national funding programme for building energy efficiency.
This generates cost and confusion for many smaller businesses as they struggle to find the right support.

Taking SMEs more seriously

But while Skidmore mentions SMEs, there are three key areas where more radical change is needed to help them make a real impact on the UK’s decarbonisation goals: 1.
Information and signposting The review proposed a “Help to Grow Green” campaign, offering information, resources and vouchers for SMEs to plan and invest in the net-zero transition.
The UK government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is piloting a new digital energy advice service to help SMEs navigate the maze of competing information sources.
Energy efficiency Skidmore also called for SMEs to be included in tax reforms to accelerate uptake of energy-efficient technologies.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, true crime reveals the paradoxes of the past

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Martin Scorsese’s latest film Killers of the Flower Moon is based on a 2017 book of the same name by David Grann that chronicled a true story of Osage Indians being systematically murdered in the 1920s.

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Martin Scorsese’s latest film Killers of the Flower Moon is based on a 2017 book of the same name by David Grann that chronicled a true story of Osage Indians being systematically murdered in the 1920s.
This oil brought enormous riches to the Osage people, who legally enjoyed “headrights” to land that could not be bought, only inherited.

New Journalism

His bestselling book was based around the principles of New Journalism, which developed as a popular literary genre during the 1960s in the hands of writers such as Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion.
They typically eschew the more closeted dimensions of experimental fiction to engage openly with the public world.
The third and final section of the book, titled “The Reporter”, boasts an epigraph from William Faulkner’s novel Absalom, Absalom!

The mythology of West

During the investigation, the Bureau of Investigation – the precursor to the FBI – regarded a rancher named William Hale as the “lone mastermind” of the killings.
He quotes an Osage tribe member as saying the white community considered murdering an Indian as merely akin to “cruelty to animals”.
He suggests that such illegal forms of brutality were always embedded at the heart of the mythology of the American West.
This narrative complexity has interesting repercussions for the debates around the question of “truth-telling” in the fraught conditions of contemporary Australia.
White’s memoir was rejected by publishers, but many years later it did morph into a fictionalised version by Grove entitled The Years of Fear (2002).

New light

The director remarked in a recent interview with Deadline that he was more interested in exploring the story’s “mystery” than reproducing “a police procedural”.
He casts the two men as charismatic villains with one foot in the old Wild West.
He has explored capitalism’s dangerous proximity to criminal activity in films such as The Aviator (2004), starring DiCaprio as Howard Hughes.
Its depth of archival research shines new light on a distressing but not entirely anomalous episode in the recent American past.

FTC Proposes Rule to Ban Junk Fees

Retrieved on:

Monday, October 16, 2023

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FTC Proposes Rule to Ban Junk Fees

Retrieved on:

Monday, October 16, 2023

The Federal Trade Commission today announced a new proposed rule to prohibit junk fees, which are hidden and bogus fees that can harm consumers and undercut honest businesses.

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The Federal Trade Commission today announced a new proposed rule to prohibit junk fees, which are hidden and bogus fees that can harm consumers and undercut honest businesses.
The agency launched a proceeding last year requesting public input on whether a rule would help to eliminate these unfair and deceptive charges.
After receiving more than 12,000 comments on how fees affect their personal spending or business, the FTC is seeking a new round of comments on a proposed junk fee rule.
To accomplish this, the proposed rule would ban the following junk fee practices that consistently confuse and trick consumers:

“Americans are fed up with the junk fees that are creeping across the economy,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.
“The FTC’s proposed rule will protect families and honest businesses from race-to-the-bottom abuses that cost us billions of dollars each year.
If finalized, the CFPB will enforce the rule against violators in the financial industry and ensure that these firms play fairly.” “No one likes surprise charges on their bill.
But when it comes to these bills, what you see isn’t always what you get,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.
“Instead, consumers have often been saddled with additional junk fees that may exorbitantly raise the price of their previously agreed-to monthly charges.

Please, don't bring back the Commonwealth Employment Service

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

There’s talk of bringing back Australia’s Commonwealth Employment Service.

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There’s talk of bringing back Australia’s Commonwealth Employment Service.
The Commonwealth Employment Service was itself the result of Australia’s first employment white paper in 1945, which wanted a service designed, in its words:

But my PhD research into Australia’s employment services suggests putting things back to how they were would be a bad idea, for two reasons.
First, it would require commitment from the Commonwealth and resources that have been lacking for decades.
Bringing back the Commonwealth Employment Service would require placing a new Commonwealth agency office in every major town and centre across the country – akin to expecting someone who was emaciated to train for the Olympics.
The Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service was abolished in the Coalition’s first 2014 budget and the remaining social workers in Centrelink are overwhelmed.

The Commonwealth can now barely manage contracts

In the early stages of outsourcing, the Department of Employment still had staff with Commonwealth Employment Service experience and were able to manage the outsourcing contracts well – they understood how complicated labour markets were at the local level.
But these days it’s unlikely there’s anyone is left within the department with direct experience with the service, or even any kind of service.

The Commonwealth links programs to payments

The other reason not to reestablish a Commonwealth Employment Service is that these days the government links the provision of services to the payment of benefits, through what it calls “mutual obligations”.
Providers complain they’ve got to divert staff away from liaising with potential employers to managing compliance.

States do things better

States and territories could then develop really superior services, like Switzerland, where employment services are developed and delivered at the level of individual cantons (states).
The states don’t have that problem and do have an immediate on-the-ground interest in getting their citizens into jobs.

Visa exploitation review urges tougher penalties and a ban on temporary migrants in sex work. Would this solve the problem?

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

This is in addition to legislation it has already introduced to strengthen employer compliance measures to protect temporary migrants from exploitation.

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This is in addition to legislation it has already introduced to strengthen employer compliance measures to protect temporary migrants from exploitation.
But the Nixon review goes further, with more than 30 recommendations.
Importantly, it has placed the compliance dimension into the visa processing system instead of keeping it mainly within Australian Border Force.

Cracking down on misconduct by migration agents

Among its recommendations, the Nixon review called for strengthening the compliance and investigative powers of the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority to address misconduct by registered migration agents.
It noted:
[Registered migration agents] may perceive that engaging in such illegal activity is low risk, and high reward.
[Registered migration agents] may perceive that engaging in such illegal activity is low risk, and high reward.
The review also said overseas migration agents are currently not required to be registered with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority to provide immigration advice, which it recommended changing.

A ban on temporary migrants in the sex industry?

Canada, for instance, has implemented a ban on any temporary migrants working in this sector.
The review recommended a similar ban in Australia, as well as increased penalties for those found to be hiring temporary migrants for the sex industry, saying:
The prohibition of temporary migrants working in the sex industry would send a strong and clear message that the Australian government has no tolerance for the exploitation of temporary migrants.
The prohibition of temporary migrants working in the sex industry would send a strong and clear message that the Australian government has no tolerance for the exploitation of temporary migrants.
Some advocates in the sex industry, such as the Scarlet Alliance), believe a full ban would not stop exploitation in the sex industry, it would just drive it further underground.

Reducing backlogs in visa processing

The Nixon review also focused on the lengthy processing times for some visa subclasses, which it said cumulatively could last up to a decade.
There’s a clear link between government under-funding, visa processing backlogs and compliance issues.
The backlogs create an incentive to engage in fraudulent asylum claims because claimants have appeal rights for longer periods of time.
In this way, a bridging visa that is issued pending an Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) decision can act like a quasi-work visa.