No such thing as privacy - top Aussie judge

People's willingness to talk loudly on mobile phones and reveal personal information about themselves online indicates that the privacy laws may require a rethink, says Australia's top judge, Murray Gleeson.

In his final public address as the country's Chief Justice of the High Court, Justice Gleeson said yesterday that he had begun to change his view that "certain things ... were self-evidently private".

"The ground seems to me to be shifting," he said.

"I used to think that having a telephone conversation was normally private. But you can't walk down the street without hearing a number of telephone conversations, some of them with people speaking loudly because of the noise of the surrounding traffic ...

"When you look at the kind of information that people publish about themselves, it makes you wonder." Justice Gleeson said.

In only the second address to the Australia's Press Club by the nation's top judge - Garfield Barwick gave one in 1966 - Justice Gleeson said the courts and the Government would increasingly have to consider the scope of privacy and confidentiality laws. "This is a very interesting area," he said.

"I wrote a judgment a few years ago in which I said there seemed to me to be certain things which were self-evidently private. I am not sure about that any more ...

"The very changes that are taking place in the concept of privacy will be a matter that parliaments have to address - and courts."

The Australian Law Reform Commission said earlier this month that the "information age" required new rules and recommended that the Government allow people to sue for gross invasions of privacy.

But the Australian Special Minister of State, John Faulkner, gave a lukewarm response to the proposal, saying a right to sue was "not a priority".

Graham Greenleaf, an expert on privacy and information technology law at the University of NSW, said that legal definitions of privacy were "not static" and new technologies had enabled people to be increasingly willing to disclose information that would once have been considered private.

"The widespread availability of communications technologies that allow individuals to publish information about themselves that can be accessed by others is unprecedented in our society," Professor Greenleaf said.

"People are only now beginning to understand the privacy implications of social-networking sites and user-generated content ... It may be that the pendulum will swing away somewhat from the great enthusiasm for disclosure that we are seeing now."

Justice Gleeson, who has been Chief Justice since 1998 and will be replaced by Robert French at the end of the month, used his address to praise an increasing emphasis on the education of judges.

He said further education should focus on encouraging more succinct judgments and accommodating the cultural backgrounds of witnesses in court.

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