Identity Crime and Privacy Laws

The Australian government will reform their Privacy Act, which has been criticised as not having a robust gatekeeping processes framework to protect Australian citizens from identity theft.

Victims of identity theft describe their experience of having personal information collected, picked over, and stored for later use. Criminals are accessing and exploiting personal data, fuelling identity crime. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that a quarter of Australians have been victims of identity crime. Child Identity Protection (CHIP) welcomes the efforts of the Australian Government in better preventing the falsification of identity rights of its citizens and hopes that measures will also be in place to speedily re-establish them, when identity theft nevertheless occurs.

Sources:  https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/news-series/insight & https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/article/jims-identity-was-stolen-and-his-bank-accounts-raided-now-he-says-his-only-option-is-to-change-his-name/s2nnb4ium