Australia vs the World in Digital Rights with Angus Murray

How does Australia stack up against other countries when it comes to our digital rights? Do our privacy laws protect us or do they leave us vulnerable to the lightly regulated tech companies? To answer these questions, we’ve brought in our very first guest onto the show… a Top Gun of Australia’s legal profession – Angus Murray.  

Angus is the co-founder and national director of The Legal Forecast, Vice President of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, member of the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, Chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia policy team and a death metal fan to boot. Angus was recently awarded the ‘Young Alumnus of the Year’ by the University of Southern Queensland. So, strap in and let Angus demystify the legal jargon and give you an insight into the world of online digital rights and privacy in Australia. 

In the blue corner of our title fight, today is the Australian legal system and privacy laws and in the red corner, we have the rest of the world. Angus does a blow by blow of how Australia’s legal history has shaped our current digital rights and privacy laws, compares them with our European contenders and gives his view on whether Australians can count on our rights as citizens to keep us safe while our human experience is being digitized with little or no say of our own.  

Also in the episode, find out how Aussie politicians can get away with sending us unsolicited text messages on mass and whether or not your boss is allowed to monitor our work laptop activity, on today’s episode of Tech For Evil, where we expose what big tech doesn’t want you to know and give you ways to fight back. 

00:30 – Introductions and Bio – Angus Murray

04:38 – How Does Australia Compare to Europe? 

08:00 – Origin of Australia’s LegalFramework

10:00 – A digital social contract

17:00 – Australia’s Privacy Act of 1988

20:26 – Australia and the EU GDPR

23:00 Informed Consent

27:41 – Australia’s Privacy Commissioner and Ben Grubb

30:00 – DIfference between breach of confidence and an invasion of privacy 

32:22 – Angus on Facebook

41:05 – Angus on our data being abused

43:41 – A Skynet, Minority Report World

44:54 – Break

45:27 – Painting a dark picture, Australia, US, EU, UK

46:53 – Politicians in my phone

50:16 – Is my boss watching me?

53:13 – The Legal Forecast

01:06:20 – Remote controlled mice

01:09:46 – What can we do to fight back?

01:13:22 – Are we all doomed or is there hope?

We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter: @tech4evil. And if you've spotted Big Tech going too far, use the hashtag #EvilSpotter and mention @Tech4Evil and share your story.

Music and media production by Reinhardt Sosin.

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