Federal Court confirms personal information requirement

The Full Federal Court recently had the opportunity to give detailed consideration to the interpretation of the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 for the very first time in 30 years.

The Court confirmed that in order for information to be personal information, it must be information that has the individual as its subject matter, so that the information can be said to be about the individual. It is not enough that there might be some way to trace the information back to the individual.

The case has been widely reported in the media. It concerns a journalist who tried to obtain metadata related to his mobile phone from Telstra on the basis that it was his personal information.

The Court found that once a call has been made or a message has been sent from a mobile, the information is about the way that the call or message is delivered and it is not about the individual that made the call or sent the message.

The definition of ‘personal information’ in the Queensland Information Privacy Act 2009 is the same as in the Commonwealth Act, so the judgement will be highly relevant to the way that the Queensland Act is interpreted.