Locke Keith: Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading Third Reading 
Locke Keith: Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading Third Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13662] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will support the Privacy (Cross-border Information) Amendment Bill. It is driven by the correct concern of the European Union to have private information on databases etc. protected when that data goes to or through other countries. It is great that the European Union is leading the world on this issue and pulling countries like New Zealand in behind. It is good that the Justice and Electoral Committee appended to its report the basic principles of national application set out in Part Two of the OECD guidelines because they are very good principles. They state that there should be limits on the collection of personal data and that there should be a specific purpose for which data is collected so that it is not just a broad-brush collection. The principles also include a use limitation principle ensuring that data will be disclosed only for particular purposes and to the right people and the right authorities. 
There is an openness principle which states that systems should be open and transparent and a security safeguards principle. The individual participation principle states that individuals should have the right to know whether they are on a database. In the New Zealand case of course they should be able to gain access to that information. If the information is wrong or dated it should be erased or changed. The accountability principle states that the whole system should be accountable. They are very good principles and this bill will help implement them particularly what previous speakers have mentioned about the prevention of information gathering that avoids European Union privacy laws by passing through New Zealand and on to a country where there are no proper privacy laws. The European Union has had an ongoing battle on this issue particularly with the United States. That is very relevant to us because we have very close connections to the United States including the passing of private data between New Zealand and the United States. 
One of the areas where the European Union has had a battle with the United States authorities is in relation to data about people who travel on airlines. For a few years the American authorities wanted every bit of information that an airline passenger might have used to purchase a ticket and board the aircraft including the credit card numbers of anyone who bought their tickets by credit card. The European Union said that that was too great an intrusion into privacy and there have been big debates on that matter in the European Parliament and at European Union negotiations. Last month they reached an agreement in terms of what data and what more limited amount of data would be passed on to the US authorities. 
The other dimension where there has been a big argument is in relation to financial transaction information that passes through the SWIFT computer system. SWIFT is an international bank trading reconciliation system involving virtually every overseas transaction including New Zealand banking transactions. New Zealand banks are among the 9400 banks that are signed up to SWIFT. All that information passes through the SWIFT system which is based in Europe with a mirror unit in the United States. The United States said to the European Union that when it had SWIFT on its territory it wanted access to every transaction in order to run it through its terrorist database. The United States said that for security reasons it wanted access to all the financial transaction information. After long negotiations the European Union and the United States reached an agreement. I am not sure of the details as I have not studied it to see whether it is a satisfactory agreement but it allows the United States access to that information with certain controls. 
There will be a European Union representative stationed in the United States to monitor whether the privacy concerns of the European Union and all those principles that I outlined in the appendix in the report back from the Justice and Electoral Committee are properly upheld. I think it will be challenging because the reality—and we found this in previous legislation that has passed through this House—is that when we talk about passing on for example customs information to the United States the idea of passing it to a specific agency in the United States is that it is for use by that agency only. It is not to be passed on by that United States agency to some other United States agency unless it is broken down a bit. This is especially the case with the establishment of Homeland Security which incorporates a whole lot of agencies that are separate in New Zealand or separate in the European Union countries. It is very hard to prevent that data crossing all sorts of boundaries in the United States. 
Secondly there is the problem of the very loose nature of the United States databases and its very weak privacy laws. I do not think that has been solved yet in the United States. The terrorist database in the United States as I understand it has 800000 names. Well there are hardly that many dangerous terrorists running around. When people investigated that database and there have been official investigations and tests to see how accurate that information is they found that there is a huge error rate—up to one-third of the entries are wrong. There are problems with all sorts of people’s privacy being intruded that should not be and people finding it difficult to get on airlines. Cat Stevens who was here recently on a singing tour was excluded from the United States because he ended up on the American database so he was hauled off the plane etc. There are still big problems with that. 
I think it is important that we are on our toes when working with the European Union to make sure that there are better privacy systems and data protection particularly in the United States. It is also important for other countries around the world. We want to be a model in that respect. I think what the Privacy Commissioner has done in this area has been fantastic too. In not only this bill but also other bills the Privacy Commissioner has insisted on being involved in vetting the regulations worked out to make sure that privacy principles were upheld in earlier legislation relating to customs. It was the Privacy Commissioner who was very insistent that any data sent overseas should be for a particular purpose and for a particular agency and not generally transferred. So with those few comments I would like to like indicate that the Green Party will be supporting this bill. Thank you.