To: "Peter La Franchi" From: Roger Clarke Subject: RE: Drones, by whichever name Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2014 17:44:12 +1100 Cc: "'Joe Urli'" , "'brad mason'" , , apfboard@privacy.org.au, apfboard@privacy.org.au Dear Peter, all At 18:39 +1000 2/3/14, Peter La Franchi wrote: > ... ACUO and its membership is >committed to finding a "sweet spot" that provides social licence to the >industry, and would be honoured to work with the Australian Privacy >Foundation in further exploring this challenging policy issue. >In this regard, I wish to explore with you the mechanisms by which we might >pursue creation of a formal policy working structure linking ACUO, UVS >International and the APF with the objective of collaboratively advancing >our mutual interests. I would presume that the most sensible approach would >in fact be for us to submit a formal proposal to the board of the APF, but >would seek your objective guidance and recommendations in this regard. Apologies for the delay in replying. I set a period for feedback from the Board, and then it got overrun by other alligators. Thanks for your email to me. I'm replying in my role as APF Chair. We have a number of caveats that need to be communicated at the commencement of every such conversation: - APF is an all-volunteer organisation with limited resources - APF avoids any relationship that could be interpreted as 'endorsement' - but of course APF is very interested indeed in seeing privacy issues addressed proactively, before they get up and bite people Another consideration is that multiple of our Committee and Board members are active professionally in areas like this. That gives rise to two factors: - declarations by them to the APF Board and clients alike - more than a little reticence in performing 'gratis consultancy' Personal Declaration: In the case of drones, my own consultancy vehicle has invested a very considerable amount of time on the topic, and its business model is based on being ahead of the market and earning consultancy revenue on the basis of the research performed. APF has in mind to publish a succinct 1-2 page Policy Statement on Drones, to join the substantial family of documents already published, at: http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/PS.html The following existing Policy Statements are directly relevant: - The Meta-Principles http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/PS-MetaP.html - Privacy Impact Assessments http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/PS-PIA.html - Consultations http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/PS-Cons.html - Visual Surveillance including CCTV http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/CCTV-1001.html - Privacy and the Media http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/Media-0903.html We would be very pleased to exchange draft documents with ACUO, to provide brief comments to ACUO, and to receive ACUO's brief comments in return. A meeting may be appropriate at some stage, but I should point out that APF's Board and Committee members are highly distributed, the organisation operates as a (very effective) virtual organisation, and it seldom funds its representatives to travel to interstate meetings, particularly of this nature. Please note that, as a matter of transparency, and in order to ensure corporate memory across a virtual organisation, it's our standard practice to publish communications like this in APF's Policy index at: http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/ We sometimes defer publication briefly, so as to avoid unnecessary prominence at the top of the list on that page or the home-page. Working drafts of documents, on the other hand, are subject to this document: - The Confidentiality of Consultations http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/ConsConf.html We look forward to your further communications. Regards ... Roger Chair, for and on behalf of the APF Board