ACT Greens Release Exposure Draft Of New Bill For “Strongest Privacy Laws In The Country”
Thursday 8 June 2017 @ 1.33 p.m. | Crime
The ACT Greens have released an exposure draft of a bill that would make a number of changes to privacy legislation. The Crimes (Invasion of Privacy) Amendment Bill 2017 is open for consultation until 28 July 2017. The Bill would create a new part of the Crimes Act 1900 that would deal with privacy offences. According to a report on the bill by ABC News, if passed, the new legislation would be “the strongest privacy laws in the country”, with provisions extending past “revenge porn” and also encompassing other invasions of privacy.
Greens MLA Caroline Le Couteur told ABC News
“We're talking about things that are more than just sexual… We're talking about things like a photograph potentially of a Muslim woman who normally would wear a hijab when she's out, and her community expects her to wear a hijab. That would be for her community potentially an intimate image, but not, of course, a sexual image.”
She also referenced incidents such as the recent prosecution in the United States of a model who sent a Snapchat photo of a nude elderly women at a Los Angeles gym, saying these kinds of pictures could fall under the new provisions:
“They're not what anyone would regard as sexual, but you would regard them as intimate, and they're certainly intimate images which were non-consensually taken and non-consensually shared,”
Key Details
The Bill’s Draft Explanatory Memorandum says the Bill aims to:
- create a new Part of the Crimes Act 1900 (“the Act”) to directly address invasions of privacy;
- move and amend section 61B of the Crimes Act (that was originally inserted to address certain “voyeuristic behaviours” including the phenomenon known as “upskirting”)
- create two new offences being the non-consensual distribution and the threat of distribution of intimate images;
- create a new power for the Courts to order the take-down or rectification of intimate images that have been distributed non-consensually;
- clarify and expand the definition of consent for both invasions of privacy and sexual offences;
- create a new provision that would protect victims of “stealthing” and other deceptive sexual practices
- clarify child pornography offences to ensure that images consensually shared by young people will not result in their prosecution, similar to the 2-year rule for sexual offences; 8. implement further technical and procedural amendments to ensure an efficient and clear criminal law; and
- incorporate the National Statement of Principles relating to the Criminalisation of the Non-Consensual Sharing of Intimate Images agreed to by the ACT Attorney-General on 19 May 2017.
The Opposition have previously tabled their own legislation to address so-called “revenge pornography” – the Crimes (Revenge Porn) Amendment Bill 2017, which is also open for consultation until 1 August 2017.
Liberal MLA Jeremy Hanson told ABC News:
“I hope that regardless of the machinations within the Assembly ... what we'll end up with is tough new laws to deal with the vexed issue of revenge porn in the ACT.”
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Sources:
Exposure Draft - Crimes (Invasion of Privacy) Amendment Bill 2017 (ACT) & Draft Explanatory Statement - available from TimeBase's LawOne Service
