Coming clean - Accidental Wiretaps: The Implications of False Positives By Always-Listening Devices For Privacy Law & Policy

 

Coming clean: Cabinet minister accused of raping a 16-year-old girl in a Kings Cross bathtub will out himself TOMORROW - read the chilling allegations against him as police CLOSE the investigation

By Charlie Moore, Political Reporter For Daily Mail Australia16:41 AEDT 02 Mar 2021 , updated 18:36 AEDT 02 Mar 2021

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• Cabinet minister is accused of raping a 16-year-old girl at an event in 1988 
• Scott Morrison said the minister 'vigorously rejects' the shocking allegations
• Woman's statement contains claims he raped her in a bath after a night out 
• For confidential support call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14 

The senior federal cabinet minister accused of raping a 16-year-old girl in a bathtub in Sydney's Kings Cross will come forward to deny the allegation.

 

Christian Porter comes forward as minister accused of historical rape, denies allegations

Attorney-general Christian Porter has rejected allegations that he raped a woman in Sydney in 1988, when she was 16. Fronting the press on Wednesday afternoon, Porter asserted that “nothing in the allegations that have been printed ever happened”. “The things that have been claimed to have happened did not happen,” he said. The minister will not be stepping down from his role. However, he will be taking a “short period of leave” for mental health purposes, he said. The woman who accused Porter took her own life in June 2020. She had gone to the police before she died, but had not made a formal statement. New South Wales police on Tuesday said its investigation into the matter had closed due to “insufficient admissible evidence”. In a message to the alleged victim’s parents, Porter said he only knew the woman “for the briefest periods at debating competitions” when he was a teenager, arguing that the parents “did not deserve the frenzied politicisation” of the woman’s death. The allegations emerged last week, when it was revealed that the prime minister, Labor senator Penny Wong, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, and Liberal MP Celia Hammond had received an anonymous letter outlining the allegations. It was later revealed that several politicians first learned of the alleged incident in 2019, before the woman’s death. Porter said that prior to the reporting of the alleged incident, law enforcement or the media had not contacted him to put forward the allegations, but had heard “a rumour”. He has reportedly sought advice from defamation lawyer Peter Bartlett. Earlier this week, the former lawyer of the alleged victim, Michael Bradley, noted that it was “theoretically possible” for a criminal rape prosecution to proceed despite the woman’s death.   “As a reality, that won’t happen,” he wrote in an article for The Mandarin‘s sister publication Crikey. Bradley has called for the minister to step down — or be ordered to step down — while the matter is formally addressed, and for the prime minister to institute an independent inquiry into the matter.   Read more: Minister at centre of historical rape allegation should ‘out himself’, Turnbull says   Prime Minister Scott Morrison has faced multiple calls for an inquiry to be conducted into the allegations, but has repeatedly rejected them, insisting that it was “a matter for the police”. The ABC has reported that the government hoped Porter’s public appearance would put an end to the matter. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday morning, Labor leader Anthony Albanese said the issue would require “further leadership and action” from the government, noting that it wouldn’t just “go away”. “I think people will be looking for further responses beyond any statement that might be made today by the minister,” he said. “I was very disappointed by Scott Morrison’s statement yesterday where he said that he hadn’t read the documentation that was forwarded to him by the woman who was at the centre of the allegation who then took her own life by her friends.”   Read more: Tudge ‘regretful’ as Four Corners ‘whistleblower’ alleges ministerial affairs and culture of misogyny in Canberra   Concerns over a culture of misogyny in Canberra were raised last year, when allegations that Porter had made unwanted advances to women during his political career were reported by the ABC’s Four Corners. His treatment of women during his time as a debater in his university days had also been questioned. The Four Corners investigation also revealed Porter’s colleague, Alan Tudge, had a consensual affair with a staffer in 2017. Those cultural concerns have come into the spotlight again in recent weeks, when former ministerial staffer Brittany Higgins alleged that she was sexually assaulted by a colleague in former defence industry minister Linda Reynolds’ office in 2019. Since Higgins spoke up to the media, three other women have come forward with complaints against the same man. Porter’s public statement on the allegations has come on the same day that sexual assault survivor and Australian of the Year Grace Tame delivered a powerful address to the National Press Club. When asked about Morrison’s initial response to Higgins’ allegations, and his statement that he was thinking about the alleged incident “as a father”, Tame said:   “It shouldn’t take having children to have a conscience. And, actually, on top of that, having children doesn’t guarantee a conscience.”   More to come…

Wasserman, Howard, Zombie Laws (February 2, 2021). Florida International University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 21-02, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3778122

“Zombie laws” are the statutory remainder from constitutional litigation. Neither a judicial declaration of constitutional invalidity nor an injunction prohibiting enforcement removes or erases a challenged law from the books

Accidental Wiretaps: The Implications of False Positives By Always-Listening Devices For Privacy Law & Policy

Barrett, Lindsey and Liccardi, Ilaria, Accidental Wiretaps: The Implications of False Positives By Always-Listening Devices For Privacy Law & Policy (February 8, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=

“Always-listening devices like smart speakers, smartphones, and other voice-activated technologies create enough privacy problems when working correctly. But these devices can also misinterpret what they hear, and thus accidentally record their surroundings without the consent of those they record, a phenomenon known as a ‘false positive.’ The privacy practices of device users add another complication: a recent study of individual privacy expectations regarding false positives by voice assistants depicts how people tend to carefully consider the privacy preferences of those closest to them when deciding whether to subject them to the risk of accidental recording, but often disregard the preferences of others. The failure of device owners to get consent from those around them is exacerbated by the accidental recordings, as it means that the companies collecting the recordings aren’t obtaining the consent to record their subjects that the Federal Wiretap Act, state wiretapping laws, and consumer protection laws require, as well as contravening the stringent privacy assurances that these companies generally provide. The laws governing surreptitious recordings also frequently rely on individual and societal expectations of privacy, which are warped by the justifiable resignation to privacy invasions that most people eventually acquire.  The result is a legal regime ill-adapted to always-listening devices, with companies frequently violating wiretapping and consumer protection laws, regulators failing to enforce them, and widespread privacy violations. Ubiquitous, accidental wiretaps in our homes, workplaces, and schools are just one more example of why consent-centric approaches cannot sufficiently protect our privacy, and policymakers must learn from those failures rather than doubling down on a failed model of privacy governance.”