On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Steve Phillips wrote:

...

(note, allowing anyone access to our proxy logs without a search warrant grates at me already and will be one argument against this that I will be raising as an issue..)

Doesn't the Privacy Act ban that sort of user tracking?

-- Juha Saarinen

- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog

Tell that to the FlyBy's crowd =) On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 08:53:22AM +1200, Juha Saarinen wrote: - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog

"Dean Pemberton" wrote:

Tell that to the FlyBy's crowd =)

The Fly Buys crowd know perfectly well what the story is. In fact, you've agreed to provide that information -- you might not realise this, but it's in the fine print: Information about members and supplementary cardholders (whether provided on application, or by participating companies and/or reward providers about member transactions) will be collected by Fly Buys and held at Fly Buys' Head Office in Wellington. This information will be used by Fly Buys, and its agents, to provide services relating to the Fly Buys programme including to provide a telephone service centre, membership and supplementary cards, Point Summaries and market research. Information from the database will also be used by Fly Buys for marketing purposes, planning, product development and research. (http://www.flybuys.co.nz/members/PrivacyStatement.asp) Basically, providing information to the Fly Buys organisation and its affiliates is the quid pro quo for using your Fly Buys card to get rewards. Don't like it? Don't use it.

On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 08:53:22AM +1200, Juha Saarinen wrote:

...

On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Steve Phillips wrote:

...

(note, allowing anyone access to our proxy logs without a search warrant grates at me already and will be one argument against this that I will be raising as an issue..)

Doesn't the Privacy Act ban that sort of user tracking?

Not of the data provided doesn't identify an individual. As Bob wrote: ... The initial work over the logs is done on your site by a program that Hitwise provide. The output of the program is a text file that you can inspect. The format is quite simple and there are no userid's in the file just site info. So there is no privacy concerns that I can see as its not possible to identify a particular users surfing pattern. The Privacy Act relates only to "personal information", which is defined by the Act as follows: ``Personal information'' means information about an identifiable individual; and includes information contained in any register of deaths kept under the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1951. (http://rangi.knowledge-basket.co.nz/gpacts/public/text/1993/se/028se2.html) If there's no direct link to an identifiable individual, then the Privacy Act simply does not apply. -- don - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Don Stokes wrote:

...

...

Doesn't the Privacy Act ban that sort of user tracking? Not of the data provided doesn't identify an individual.

...

Personal information'' means information about an identifiable individual

If there's no direct link to an identifiable individual, then the Privacy Act simply does not apply.

That depends on *which* individual one is considering. It may not identify individual visitors, but in the case of "personal home pages", it would certainly identify the individuals who are receiving visitors. I would consider "how many people visited my personal web site" to be information personal to me, albeit a trivial amount, and it's clearly identifiable to the individual concerned. If privacy is to have any meaning in the information age, it can no longer be about just stopping obvious intrusions: limitless agregation of freely discarded trivia like "how many friends do you have" can now breach any reasonable boundary of personal identity. -Martin - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog