Is it a breach of privacy law in Australia if schools track student device usage at home? Since I usually only use programming Stack Exchange sites, sorry if I do anything wrong in this post. My school recently installed software on all student devices (owned by the school) which can track all activity on the device. I understand the intent if this was limited to only the school's network, but tracking students at home seems a bit invasive. It was also done without without student or parent consent. Is this a breach of privacy laws?
Commonwealth Public Schools The Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 does not apply to state and territory governments including public education. Private Schools The Privacy Act applies if: they have an annual turnover of more than $3 million - this will capture all but the smallest schools. At a low-end fee of $10k per student per year, this means 300 students will cross the threshold. they’re connected to a larger organisation (with an annual turnover of $3 million) - which captures most private education networks such as Catholic Education Australia. they supply a health service and hold health information, although this isn’t their primary activity - which is unlikely to apply. Consent is required to collect sensitive information or to disclose non-sensitive personal information for purposes other than for which it was collected. There is no age criterion on consent - an individual who can understand the concepts (as you clearly can) can give or withhold their own consent even if they are a child. Given that they can monitor all activity, this may be sensitive information (e.g. political opinions or associations, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership or associations, sexual orientation or practices) depending on what you use the computer for. If so, then consent is required. However, if the school prescribes the activities that you are allowed to use the computer for such that you are not required to disclose sensitive information; if you do so knowing that it was being collected this would be implied consent. State Law new-south-wales NSW Education is subject to a specific Code of Practice under the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act. Consent may or not be required depending on the purpose for the collection of the information. For example, if its primary purpose is to &quot;control and regulate student discipline in government schools&quot; then consent is not required.
There are legitimate apps that let you buy phone numbers. With the right app I can buy let's say a landline number in Kansas. I call you, and you will think it's some guy in Kansas calling you. That's totally legal, it's a genuine phone number, and just like I can buy 10 phones and have ten phone numbers, I can use an app to pretend to have 10 phones. I cannot pretend to by your child's school with that kind of app, because for obvious reasons your child's school's number is not up for sale. If an app let's you pretend to be someone else, like your child's school, then your phone company will be very interested in hearing about that. You don't have to sue the app maker, your phone company will. These three police officers will also be very interested, and impersonating a police officer is by itself a crime. (Normally impersonating a police officer is done by putting on a uniform, but calling you with the number of that police officer will also count). So these three police officers will have a word with your husband as well. So suing the app maker (you can't sue an app, you can only sue the people responsible for it) is very hard, and not needed. Complain to your phone company, complain to the police, first to the three police officers he impersonated (the phone company will have records of phone calls seemingly coming from them) to advice them they are being impersonated, and then you complain to the police for harassment.
Could I get into legal trouble for this? No. Relax. Your three emails are very unlikely to cause a data privacy professor to feel harassed. Just move on regardless of whether he replies at all. Don't keep sending another email just because the recipient has not replied to your previous one. As for the issue that prompted you to start emailing the professor, what everyone else has told you is correct. And the other email user is unlikely to take court action for something like this. The effort and cost of drafting &amp; filing suit, and then pursuing discovery would dissuade most people unless they are incurring actual losses (which is not the case with your messages). Just move on so that this other user also can move on.
As someone who is not a lawyer, but is familiar with FERPA and university policies as a former instructor, I would be more than willing to bet that you signed or otherwise agreed to some type of Terms of Service before being given access to that type of service. There are almost certainly numerous things you signed to become a student, as well as various policies you agreed to in first gaining access to the computer services, which would apply here. I can tell you with certainty that the school where I was a student had a policy that I agreed to that they would make certain information available to other students unless I chose for it to be restricted. However, my university did not have any photos of students that were viewable by other students in a directory. That said, there were also times I participated in extra-curricular activities where I was required to sign release forms giving the school the rights to video tape, record, and photograph me, and to do what they wished with those things. So, with that in mind, I suspect that's partly due to FERPA restrictions, but also largely due to their own privacy policies that go beyond what FERPA requires. All in all, I doubt they would be okay with you using their photos for your own private use - student privacy is something that is taken very seriously.
This is possibly but not necessarily fine. The data controller (the garage) is responsible for safeguarding your personal data. They must take appropriate safety measures, but this depends a lot on their own risk assessment. For example, to protect the data from being used by employees for their personal purposes, the controller might use organizational measures like a policy “you're not allowed to do that.” Many companies allow employees to use their personal devices for work purposes (BYOD). When the data controller allows this and takes appropriate safety measures, everything is perfectly fine. The company still has to make sure that the data is only processed for legal purses and deleted afterwards. Implementing a BYOD policy in a GDPR compliant manner is difficult but not impossible. A data breach has occurred when the security measures were insufficient and your data was deleted or disclosed without authorization. Your scenario would only be a breach if the company did not have a BYOD policy and the salesman used their personal phone, and arguably then only if that device is also breached. However, do not discount the alternatives: they do have a BYOD policy and the salesman is acting within their instructions the salesman was using a company-controlled device, not their personal phone If you have good reason to believe that your data was mishandled (and these alternatives do not apply), then the GDPR offers you the following remedies: You can of course complain to the data controller, especially if they have a dedicated data protection officer. You can lodge a complaint with a supervision authority, which is the ICO in the UK. They expect you to attempt to resolve your issue with the controller first. The ICO can then decide if they want to investigate the issue. You can sue them for compliance and for actual damages suffered (you have none, though). Note that all of these alternatives are more effort than they are likely worth. In particular, the garage can always correct the problem, e.g. by getting your contact info deleted from the personal device or by creating a retroactive BYOD policy.
Say I build myself a faraday cage/wave screen around my house, potentially resulting in poor nework coverage for my neighbours. Questions about land property and constructing permits apart, can I be sued for that? By the network operator? by the neighbours? In most countries, the use of the radio spectrum is regulated (who may send what on which frequency, at which power, etc.). As part of these regulations it is usually forbidden to interfere with the reception of radio waves. So if what you do causes your neighbours to have reception problems, then yes, that will most likely be illegal. In France, the government agency responsible for these problems is ARCEP (Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes). If someone notices reception problems, they can complain to ARCEP, as explained for example on the page Le traitement des plaintes en brouillage ("Handling of complaints about jamming"). While you will probably not go to prision for jamming reception, you could have to pay a significant fine. This article on cell phone jamming mentions a penalty of "up to six months in prison or a 30,000 € fine" for "selling or installing" a cell phone jammer. In addition to that, anyone harmed by the reception problems could sue you in civil court and try to collect financial damages (how much that would be will be up to a judge to decide). That said, note that a faraday cage around your house should not hinder reception outside your house. A faraday cage only influences reception inside the cage, not outside. However, that is off-topic here :-).
There is not necessarily a contradiction. Information that they may keep may be: Account information Subscriber information Information on breaches of the Terms of Service or Agreement So yes, they might certainly not keep any logs &ndash; although that claim is doubtful, since they almost certainly keep at least error-level logs of their services &ndash; but that doesn't mean that they have no information to disclose to law enforcement. It's also questionable what "logs" refers to &ndash; would aggregate statistics be considered a log, by law? Would your last known IP address be considered a log, provided they don't keep any other history?
FERPA protects the privacy of students' records, irrespective of their age or grade level. Age is generally only relevant in determining who can assert those privacy rights. When you enter school at age 5 or whatever, your parents make your privacy decisions for you. When you turn 18, you become an &quot;eligible student,&quot; i.e., eligible to assert or waive your privacy rights without parental oversight.