Paul:
Let’s go to John who has got a question about airlines and personal information.
John:
Good morning, David and Paul. I just got back from an overseas trip where an incident happened. One passenger and I mistook each other’s check in luggage. So in order for him to reach me to get his luggage back he got all my personal information from the airline: my passport number, my date of birth, even my picture. In order to reach me, he published all the information on the website.
DW:
So you took someone’s luggage by mistake?
John:
Yes, and he took mine.
DW:
That’s happened to me once. Someone else took our bag at Qantas, at the airport, and they were fantastic they actually rang the other passenger and they came back.
John:
I rang the airline as well at the time. I didn’t find the other party’s information so I stopped getting their personal information.
DW:
The privacy rules, John, will depend upon the law that applies to the airline in question. So if you were transiting Hong Kong, or your bag went missing in Hong Kong then the answer is it would be Hong Kong law and Hong Kong privacy law that would apply.
It’s going to be a mixture of questions of the airline. If you were flying an Australian based airline and you bought your ticket in Australia your privacy would be governed by Australian rules.
John:
No, it was an international airline.
DW:
They might be bound by the information they collect here from you.
This is the issue that arises in privacy, because you reach an agreement with an Australian company and they say look you’ve got to be aware that we’re going to send your data to another country for the purpose of doing work on it, processing it, storing it whatever, and once your data leaves Australia the Australian laws don’t apply to the data. So if your data’s gone to the Philippines or to India or to somewhere else then your data will be dealt with there according to the rules that apply to the data where it is.
John:
Fair enough. But how about the responsibility of the individual who got the information and published online.
DW:
Well they’re not covered by the privacy principles or the privacy rules. I understand the complaint against the airline. My view is they handed out too much information because how did they know you had the bag?
John:
Because there are two bags missing.
DW:
So the assumption was it was yours, you had it.
John:
Yes.
Paul:
Okay, John thanks very much for your call.