I'm not sure whether you are interested about the new Privacy laws, or just
exasperated. If it's the latter, hit  Ctrl D now, but if it's the former:

The new Privacy Act regulates the handling of "personal information" - that
is, information relating to identifiable individuals.  So it's arguable that
a vanilla 'company' email address, that doesn't otherwise identify an
individual, is not covered by the new Act.

If it was your personal email account, with other information that
identifies you, it's a different story.

Tha Act requires that, when collecting personal information, you must take
reasonable steps to inform the individual of a number of things, including
the purposes for which the information is collected.

Personal information can generally only be used for a secondary purpose if
the two purposes are related, and the individual would reasonably expect the
information to be used or disclosed for the secondary purpose.

There is a specific provision relating to direct marketing - this "secondary
purpose exemption" can only be used when:
�	the information is not "sensitive";
�	it is impracticable to seek the individual's consent;
�	the individual has not indicated that they do not wish to receive
direct marketing material;  and
�	there are "opt out" options on each form of direct marketing
communication, indicating to individuals how they can contact the
organisation to stop receiving direct marketing material.


Cheers


James Omond
Deputy General Counsel - Australia
Southcorp Limited
ABN 80 007 722 643

Tel. (03) 9679 2202
Fax (03) 9679 2233

Vested interest - inhouse lawyer for a big company, about to be made
redundant and start his own small, commercial law firm.

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Archer [mailto:rha§juggernaut.com.au]
Sent: Friday, 7 September 2001 7:50
To: dns§auda.org.au
Cc: 'chair§caube.org.au'
Subject: Re: FW: [DNS] Melbourne IT Spam...


At 2:00 PM +1000 6/9/01, Rowe, Joshua wrote:

>In fact under the provisions of the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act
>2000 (Cth), it will be illegal to do this with newly collected email
>addresses after the 21st of December.

I'm sorry, but I find it simply impossible to believe that it will
become illegal to send an email to a customer under that law.

I suppose my email address in my customer's database will also be
"protected" by this legislation, therefore they can't email me
either.

And surely there's no reason email addresses should be any different
to phone numbers or postal addresses.

Hey presto... all of a sudden it's impossible to contact *anyone*
by *any* method.

I think you're missing something.

 ...Richard.

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