Privacy Commissioner - Te Mana Matapono Matatapu

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Forum Speakers' bios and presentation summaries

Marie Shroff
Marie Shroff was appointed to the independent statutory position of Privacy Commissioner in late 2003. Her responsibilities include independent comment on significant personal information policies and issues, providing opinions on privacy complaints made against government and business, monitoring government data matching and promoting good personal information handling practices in New Zealand.

From 1987-2003 Marie Shroff held the position of Secretary of the Cabinet and Clerk of the Executive Council, and was responsible for the operation of Cabinet, the Executive Council, and Government House. She worked with four Governors-General, six Prime Ministers, and governments of various parties.

Earlier in her career Marie Shroff worked in foreign affairs, teaching, journalism and the public service. From 1986 to 1987 she led an official group managing the corporatisation of nine major state agencies in New Zealand. From 1980 82 she was seconded to the UK Cabinet Office.

Jon Macdonald
Jon has been Trade Me's CEO for the past two years. He started with the company in 2003, and has also worked as Trade Me's Chief Technology Officer and then General Manager.

Prior to Trade Me, Jon worked in London for HSBC Investment Bank in a variety of technical and management positions, including work in technology R&D. He has also worked for Deloitte Consulting in Wellington, focusing on the telecommunications and financial services industries.

Jon has a Bachelor of Engineering from Canterbury University.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer
Sir Geoffrey was appointed as President of the Law Commission on 1 December 2005 for a term of five years. Sir Geoffrey has had a long career in the law, as an academic lawyer, a politician, and a law practitioner.

Educated at the Victoria University of Wellington where he graduated BA in political science and LLB, he was awarded a British Commonwealth Fellowship at the University of Chicago where he graduated Doctor of Law cum laude in 1967.

As the Member of Parliament for Christchurch Central from 1979-1990, he became Deputy Leader of the Opposition and later in 1984-1989 Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General. He was from 1984-1987 Leader of the House of Representatives as well. After the 1987 election, he became Minister for the Environment, a post he held until 1990. In 1989-1990 he was Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Both before entering politics and after leaving it, he was a Professor of Law at the Victoria University of Wellington and at the University of Iowa in the United States. In 1994 Geoffrey Palmer became a founding partner of Chen, Palmer & Partners, the Wellington based public law specialist law firm, but throughout his period of practice continued to teach at the Victoria University of Wellington and at the University of Iowa. He left the firm to join the Law Commission.

Geoffrey Palmer has written a long list of books and scholarly articles on legal matters. Perhaps the best known of them is: Unbridled Power: An Interpretation of New Zealand's Constitution and Government first published in 1984, with a second edition in 1987. Then co-authoring with his son Dr Matthew Palmer, the book was re-titled as Bridled Power: New Zealand's Constitution on Government, published in 1997, with the fourth edition in 2004. During his years in practice, Geoffrey Palmer appeared in the superior courts including the Privy Council in a number of important cases.

Since 2002, Geoffrey Palmer has been the New Zealand Commissioner on the International Whaling Commission.

He is a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council. He was awarded a KCMG in 1991 and made an Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia in the same year. In 1991 he was listed on the United Nations "Global 500 Roll of Honour" for his work on environmental issues. These included reforming resource management law. Geoffrey Palmer has also sat as a Judge ad hoc on International Court of Justice in 1995. He holds honorary doctorates from three Universities. He was made a Senior Counsel in 2008.

The Law Commission's ‘Review of Privacy' Stage 4
"Privacy" - a chocolate fish for anyone who can define it!

Privacy youth advisory group
Rosie Batt
Rosie has recently acquired a degree and itchy feet, so is taking her BA in International Relations and Sociology for a trip across Central America and Europe. As a coordinator and leader of the Youth Advisory Group, she has enjoyed being able to be part of raising privacy awareness among young people, and supporting youth advocacy in the public sector.

Andrew Goddard
Andrew is currently in his third year at Victoria University completing a triple-major in Political Science, International Relations and Public Policy. His primary academic focus is in conflict resolution, environmental issues and human rights. He is also serving as the Student Representative at the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Institute for International Affairs and working as a Research Assistant at the University looking into the causes of famines and comparative analysis of political regimes. Since August 2009, he has worked with the Privacy Commission helping to coordinate and lead the Youth Advisory Group.

James Jasper, Aotea College
Tessa Ralston, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School
Blanche Bradford, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School
Kelly Parker, Aotea College
Daniel Friar, Youth Support Worker at ‘Evolve'
Christine Volk, Wainuiomata High School

Living online
What do today's young people think about privacy - do they care? Are they worried about who's getting their information? Find out directly from those who know and who know how best to give advice to their peers.

Nat Torkington
Nat Torkington, a keen observer of trends in use of the web and in emerging technologies, is building networks of open source software innovators, entrepreneurs, and emerging technologists in New Zealand. Two years ago he created the Kiwi Foo Camp, ‘...a gathering of technology, industry people and policy makers...', that takes place yearly in Warkworth, north of Auckland, to bring together other like minds and influencers.

A founding blogger for O'Reilly Radar (scanning horizons ‘...to get a good picture of what the technology world is thinking about.') he ran the first web server in New Zealand, and over the last ten years has chaired and co-chaired numerous conferences for O'Reilly - an important international publisher about the web and emerging technologies. He has co-authored the Perl Cookbook (Perl is one of the programming languages that glues the web together), is a banjo player and uses Apple Macs.

Clifton Chan
Clifton is a Senior Advisor at the State Services Commission (SSC) where he assists agencies with their Enterprise Architecture activities within their agencies and across government. Clifton has worked abroad and in New Zealand, in the private and public sector, in such diverse of roles as: Enterprise Architect, Solution Architect; project manager; software developer; systems administrator; senior database administrator; and lecturer (at Victoria University of Wellington). Clifton has a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Victoria University of Wellington.

Clifton has been at SSC since July 2006; prior to that he was at the Inland Revenue Department for over 15 years. He has worked on: design and maintenance of large databases; drug clinical trial management software; outsourcing and vendor management; software, system and network security; web filing applications; e-Business programmes; and monitoring large business cases (in government). One of Clifton's current activities is looking at strategic issues for government associated with cloud computing.

Cloud computing and privacy
Nat and Clifton will be discussing user and agency perspectives on:
• what cloud computing actually is;
• what the big privacy, confidentiality and sovereignty issues are; and
• what strategies you can use to help you manage privacy risks in the cloud.

John Edwards
John Edwards is one of New Zealand's longest standing privacy professionals. He works with a wide range of public and private sector agencies, often with representatives of other disciplines. He has also acted as a consultant to the Law Commission during its review of privacy.

Julia Fomison
Julia is currently Chairperson of the District Health Board Privacy Group and is a Privacy Officer and Complaint Manager with the Canterbury District Health Board. She began her extensive career in the health sector as an occupational therapist at a time when there was no privacy legislation before picking up the challenge of working with staff to increase their understanding of the Health Information Privacy Code and ensure their compliance with the Privacy Act.

Privacy professionalism in New Zealand - where is this going in the next decade?
The privacy industry has grown exponentially in the last twenty years. That growth has been accompanied by increasing specialisation and segmentation. Privacy professionals now come from a range of disciplines, from the law profession, which ranges from rights oriented practice, to compliance frameworks, Information Technology, Records Management, Public Policy and Audit. Do these specialists understand each other, and is there a shared understanding about the issues and key principles? How does this diversity of approaches affect the advice given, and the privacy outcomes?

Hon Lianne Dalziel
Lianne Dalziel is the Member of Parliament for Christchurch East and Labour's spokesperson on Justice and Commerce. During her 20 year parliamentary career she has been Minister of Immigration, Commerce, Small Business, Senior Citizens, Women's Affairs & Food Safety, as well as Associate Minister of Justice and Education. She was a member of the Justice & Law Reform Select Committee, which saw the Privacy Act enacted in 1993 and has maintained an interest in privacy issues.

Kathryn Dalziel
Kathryn Dalziel is an Associate at Taylor Shaw in Christchurch practicing in privacy, employment law and civil litigation and has presented seminars on behalf of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner since 1996. She has published articles on privacy, authored Privacy in Schools and co-authored the chapter on Health Information in Health Care and the Law (4th edition). Kathryn also lectures in Legal Ethics, School of Law, University of Canterbury. Kathryn is a member of the NZLS Human Rights and Privacy Committee, Standards Committee (Canterbury-Westland), and Canterbury-Westland Ethics Committee.

Debate: Owning up to mistakes - "Breach notification should become mandatory in New Zealand"
While every effort has been made to ensure that the content of this debate is accurate as is possible in all the circumstances, contains a reasonable level of humour, all defamatory references have been removed and the jokes are out of copyright, any person attending this debate or accessing the performance by any means including electronic, digital or what people said about the debate afterwards, does so at his, her or its own risk and the debaters and Forum organisers make no warranty, express or implied, nor assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, correctness, completeness, use of humour or any opinion or information that is expressed by the debaters; and the debaters may change, delete, add to or otherwise amend their opinion and their jokes at any time without notice. Likewise the Forum organisers and/or the debaters are not responsible for the content of websites or other websites on which the material is stored, although if a website selling Trelise Cooper fashions would like to post the debate, the debaters would be prepared to endorse said products on the website in return for a little koha from the store. Nothing said in this debate is, or shall be relied on as, a promise, representation or a statement of belief/opinion by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the New Zealand Parliament, the New Zealand Labour Party, Taylor Shaw (Barristers and Solicitors), or the Dalziel family (who wish to disassociate themselves from Lianne and Kathryn's public rivalry at this time). The debate should not be construed as legal or professional advice and anyone accessing the debate in any form should take specific advice from qualified professional people (like Kathryn Dalziel: 03 3794114) before undertaking any action following information gained in listening to the debate. All those who attend or otherwise access the debate and its contents and who ignore this disclaimer do so at their own risk.

Alma Whitten
Alma Whitten joined Google in 2003 as the first hire for a specialised team of software engineers devoted to security, and is now Google's global engineering lead for privacy. Her work within Google has maintained a strong focus on protecting the privacy of Google's users, and has included security and privacy policy development and consultation, development of engineering process, and design and implementation of technical controls. She has a long history of working on protection of Google's log data.

Prior to joining Google, Alma was best known for her 1999 technical paper on usability as a primary issue for computer security, titled "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt", which is often considered one of the seminal papers for usability of security as a field of research. She continues to research, write, and speak on human-centered approaches to security and privacy as part of her work at Google. Alma holds a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Alan Toy
Alan Toy specialises in the areas of information privacy law and company law. He has published academic articles in these areas in publications such as The New Zealand Universities Law Review and The New Zealand Business Law Quarterly. He has also contributed to the Canterbury Law Review on the law of tracing. Alan is particularly interested in legal issues in the context of cyberspace.

Alan holds the degree of Master of Laws with First Class Honours from the University of Auckland Law School (2001), and was a Senior Tutor in the Department of Commercial Law at the University of Auckland for four years (2001 to 2004).

Alan has been a Lecturer at the University of Otago since 2005, and has taught a wide range of Business Law papers at all three years of the BCom degree. Alan has been a member of the Australasian Law Teachers' Association (ALTA) since January 2003.

Tane Cassidy
Tane Cassidy is of Nga Puhi, Ngati Hine descent. He currently manages the Business Development Unit at the Health Sponsorship Council (HSC). The HSC is a national Crown Entity responsible for promoting health and encouraging healthy lifestyles, specifically in the areas of tobacco control (Smokefree and Auahi Kore), sun safety (SunSmart), healthy eating (Feeding our Futures), and problem gambling. Tane has previous experience in the areas of sport, fitness and leisure; social policy; and health, including funding personal health services and managing accountability arrangements with District Health Boards.

The right information to the right people at the right time: linking electronic health records
The HSC is involved in developing and testing a whanau ora software tool as an innovative way of assisting families to engage in and manage their own health issues. Tane will briefly discuss the drivers behind the proposed software development, how it works, and the HSC's approach for dealing with the privacy related matters.

Dougal McKechnie
In a career spanning over twenty years, Dougal has worked in a wide variety of public and private sector organisations in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. He has significant information and knowledge management expertise gained from a variety of professional disciplines and settings.

Dougal is the Chief Executive of the New Zealand Health IT Cluster - a vibrant alliance of vendors and supporting members including academia, healthcare providers and policy makers. Vendor members represent multi-nationals and local companies providing information and technology solutions and services to the health sector. Cluster membership currently stands at over 80 organisations (and growing) and vendor members generate conservatively estimated revenue of around NZ$300 million per annum.

Prior to the Cluster, Dougal was manager of the Health Information Strategy Advisory Committee, an independent statutory body established by the Minister of Health to provide governance, oversight and leadership for the implementation of the eHealth strategy in New Zealand. In this role he established strong clinical, consumer and executive networks across the health and disability system.

Before joining the health sector he worked for the Ministry of Justice, Treasury, Commerce Commission and Opus International Consultants. In the United Kingdom he worked for a number of blue chip firms including global architectural firm DEGW, British Airways, Price Waterhouse and Arthur Andersen.

Dougal has served on numerous committees involved in health, eGovernment, information management and professional initiatives and currently is a member of the Health Information Standards Organisation. Dougal has a Masters of Business Information Innovation from RMIT University in Melbourne.

The right information to the right people at the right time: electronic health records in action
Patient-centric health care. Clinical leadership. Better, sooner, more convenient. Quality improvement. Value for money. This is the vocabulary of the ‘health system' currently in New Zealand. But what does it actually mean for the patient, whanau, and the community? Dougal will discuss the current and emerging priorities around health ICT and electronic health records in particular. What relevance do old-school models of care and information protection frameworks have in the emerging new world of the empowered health care-consumer and people actively managing their wellness?

Mike Seddon
Mike Seddon has been involved in operational support in the computer industry for 26 years. He's been Telecom New Zealand's Operational Security Manager for the past three years and has managed Operational Security teams within the Telco for the last ten. His current responsibilities cross all production platforms with particular attention to the back-end infrastructure and processes required to maintain security for Telecom New Zealand and its customers.

Mike has a passion for computer security and as a result is one of the co-founders and steering committee members of the New Zealand Internet Task Force (NZITF) and is currently industry chair for the New Zealand Network Security Information Exchange (NSIE).

Metlstorm (aka Adam Boileau)
Adam Boileau is a freelance IT security consultant, based in Wellington. As a paid hacker, Adam breaks into organisations large and small all over New Zealand to assess the effectiveness of their security technology - and the news is rarely good. In his spare time under nom-de-hacker Metlstorm, Adam organises the Kiwicon hacker conference, podcasts with award winning internet security radio show risky.biz and currently shares the top place on a google images search for "unix beard". Adam has presented at conferences from Las Vegas to Singapore, and in a career low point, even Hamilton.

Robert Hesketh
Robert Hesketh has been the Director of Human Rights Proceedings since June 2002. The Director has three statutory functions. First he receives applications for legal representation before the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT) from people complaining about discrimination under the Human Rights Act when those complaints have not been settled by the Human Rights Commission. Secondly, he receives referrals from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner so he can decide whether to bring proceedings in the HRRT for an interference with privacy. Thirdly, he can intervene in cases brought by others in the HRRT alleging an interference with privacy.

The Director receives around 15 referrals per year from the Privacy Commissioner. The majority of these referrals settle once litigation is contemplated, but the Director issues proceedings in about 20% of cases.

Professor Paul Roth
Dr Paul Roth is a professor of law at the University of Otago, where he teaches a course on Information and Data Protection Law. He is the author of Privacy Law and Practice, New Zealand's leading legal reference work on privacy law. He recently wrote the report for the European Union on the adequacy of New Zealand's privacy law in terms of the EU Directive on data protection.

Legal Update - recent cases in HRRT and indication of future directions
Hear about the latest Tribunal, High Court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court cases on the Privacy Act. There will be a focus on interesting legal developments, novel cases, and the latest key issues relating to legal practice in Privacy Act cases. Robert will be focusing on the Director's role in the cases he's been involved in.

Professor Colin Bennett
Colin Bennett received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Wales, and his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since 1986 he has taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, where he is now Professor. From 1999-2000, he was a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In 2007 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, he is Visiting Professor at the School of Law, University of New South Wales.

His research has focused on the comparative analysis of surveillance technologies and privacy protection policies at the domestic and international levels. In addition to numerous scholarly and newspaper articles, he has published five books: Regulating Privacy: Data Protection and Public Policy in Europe and the United States (Cornell University Press, 1992); Visions of Privacy: Policy Choices for the Digital Age (University of Toronto Press, 1999, co-edited with Rebecca Grant); The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in the Digital Age (The MIT Press, 2006 with Charles Raab); The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance (The MIT Press, 2008); and Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security and Identification in Global Perspective (Routledge, 2008 co-edited with David Lyon). He has completed policy reports on privacy protection for the Canadian government, the Canadian Standards Association, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the European Commission, and the UK Information Commissioner. He is currently the co-investigator of a large Major Collaborative Research Initiative grant entitled "The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting."

Carol Hewitt
Carol's experience with applying privacy legislation in the management of and access to personal information extends over a number of years, working with the Motor Vehicle and Driver Licence Registers when the current law was enacted.

In her current role as Manager, Justice Sector Information Strategy, Carol provides guidance to justice sector agencies on the exchange of justice sector data between law enforcement agencies, and other government departments. In recent months, this has expanded to exchanging information with international jurisdictions requesting access to justice sector data.

Sarah Oliver
Sarah has worked at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as a Legal and Policy Adviser for three years. Her work involves advising agencies on policy projects and legislative work that have privacy impacts to ensure that the appropriate protections are in place.

Privacy by design workshop: easy tools for thinking about privacy when building systems or developing policies
What's the best time to start thinking about a privacy impact assessment (PIA)? Why are they important and where should I start? This session will help you answer these questions and understand how a PIA can help you answer requests such as "access to any personal data and any other data" and save you time in the long run.

Professor John Burrows QC
Professor John Burrows was appointed as a Law Commissioner for a term of five years from February 2007. Before this, John Burrows was a Professor of Law at the University of Canterbury from 1974. He has a PhD (London) 1966 and an LLM (Canterbury) 1964. He is a Life Member of Clare Hall Cambridge, and Herbert Smith Visitor to The Faculty of Law, Cambridge in 2006.

Professor Burrows is author or co-author of books on Statute Law, Media Law and Contract Law in New Zealand and has contributed to books on Tort Law and Commercial Law. He has written various journal articles.

From 1980-1986 Professor Burrows was Head of Department and Dean of The Faculty of Law, University of Canterbury. From 1992-1998 he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor University of Canterbury and from 1999-2000 he was Deputy Vice-Chancellor University of Canterbury. He has chaired many central university committees and been a member of various national committees on tertiary education. He has been a Barrister of the High Court of New Zealand specialising in opinion work, and was appointed a Queens Counsel in 2005. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2009.

While at the University of Canterbury, he lectured in Media Law, Contract and Legislation. He is a current member of the New Zealand Legislation Advisory Committee, and a Trustee for the New Zealand Law Foundation, and was formerly a member of the Contracts and Commercial Law Reform Committee. He has been involved in continuing education for the legal and journalism professions.

Privacy: What's the law got to do with it?

Martin Cocker
Martin joined NetSafe as the Executive Director in March 2006. NetSafe is New Zealand's independent cyber safety organisation working to help all New Zealanders enjoy safe digital participation. Before that, he worked in the ICT industry for 12 years including five years as the General Manager of Educational ICT services provider Itas.

Martin is a regular speaker on cyber safety and cyber security topics both within New Zealand and internationally - and has a blog (http://blog.netsafe.org.nz) for those who just can't get enough cybersafety.

He has a wife, two young children, and a small dog. His Trademe rating is 134 four star so you can trust him - at least to ship items in a timely manner.

Iain Rennie, State Services Commissioner

Iain Rennie took up the position of State Services Commissioner on 1 July 2008.
The State Services Commissioner is a statutory appointment, made by the Governor General on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.

Mr Rennie has been in the Public Service since 1986. The majority of his career has been spent at the Treasury where he was Deputy Secretary to the Treasury for nine years prior to taking up the position of Deputy State Services Commissioner in 2007.

He has participated in two secondments to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, as Acting Director for the Policy Advisory Group in 2004, and as an Economic Advisor from 1990 to 1993. He was also seconded to the Office of the Leader of the Opposition as Economic Advisor from 1989 to 1990. Prior to taking up the SSC appointment he participated in the strategic leadership of the Treasury - providing advice to the Minister of Finance on microeconomic policy and fiscal management issues.

Mr Rennie has a BA (Hons) in Economics from Victoria University of Wellington.