Webb DuncanPRIVACY BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 18 June.Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): What a joy—twice in quick succession a flood of favours! This is a massive rewrite of one of the most important pieces of legislation in our domestic law and it was I must say in the Justice Committee which I've sadly had to put to one side looked at in great detail. I must say the officials were extremely patient as we worked through—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry I wonder if members could just keep the level of private conversation down a little bit. This is a very interesting contribution.Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Thank you Madam Speaker I think. One of the really fraught issues which I think is well worth discussing is what officials essentially called the right to anonymity—that is to say the right to go online and on to a website and to not enter your personal details. There is—principle one I think it is—a principle that says that an organisation is entitled and it's appropriate to gather information for legitimate purposes. Now quite obviously if you are looking to subscribe to the Herald they'll want to know your name. They may well want to know your address for billing purposes and probably they'll want your credit card number. However if you go to Stuff and all you want to do is read their free material then the question is: is a website like that entitled to ask for details?Of course we know the big concern is that organisations of that nature acquire this information and may inappropriately use it for other means: to target you for advertising to—God forbid—sell that information elsewhere. Now we know that this would be a breach of privacy—to use it for a purpose for which it was not gathered—that in itself is inappropriate. But the really interesting conversation was whether there should be a stand-alone right to remain anonymous—a right not to give your details. Now at the end of the day it was hard to clearly articulate that right.I guess as a lawyer I'm always concerned that something that you can't say clearly you can't really say at all. In fact if we can't express that right appropriately then it's not a right that can really exist. So the compromise was to look at principle one and to essentially tack on to it this right of anonymity. The fact is that in situations of that nature there is no legitimate reason to inquire into those additional features.This is important because it's essentially building on the European framework. The Europeans in fact have a very clear right along those lines but one which comes from an entirely different academic and scholastic framework—one where in fact the rights which people have are those given to them rather than the common law approach which we're all very familiar with I'm sure which is that you have all of the rights unless they're actually taken away. So what we have is a great move which took a lot of negotiation. The other really important thing in the bill is making sure this is EU-compatible. One of the very interesting things is the fact that privacy law is now very much cross-border. The fact is that the websites we use and the information we give moves seamlessly across borders and many of the internet service providers we use and the websites we visit are based elsewhere. Now an important step taken here is to recognise overseas providers that meet EU standards—so buying essentially in to this EU framework. What that means is that rather than having to ascertain whether overseas providers are compliant with New Zealand privacy law we can make an assumption that that's case. Of course that cuts both ways. So what that means is that because we are upgrading our privacy law to meet EU standards our providers and our internet-based businesses won't have to go through any rigorous vetting process. They are assumed because they met our privacy laws that they will of course meet European privacy laws.So look this was an excellent piece of legislation.Angie Warren-Clark: It's a big piece.Dr DUNCAN WEBB: It is a big piece of legislation there. Look this is a substantial rewrite. May I say that it's really important that we do this. This was a bill which was first drafted I believe in 1991. So it's great to see that we went right through that and put it in much more accessible language. The Parliamentary Counsel Office did a great job in addressing that in going through it and in actually making it much much more readable. So this is an excellent piece of legislation. I was pleased to be on the Justice Committee to see it through. It collaborated well and I commend this bill to the House.