A lot of individuals and groups have had their say regarding the controversial proposed Online Safety Act. But one name stands out as particularly interesting. Mining giant Adani has suggested making doxxing illegal as a way of combatting online harms.
In response to the initial exposure draft of the Online Safety Act, the Department of Communications called for people’s responses to the proposed bill.
Despite consulting for more than two months, the Bill was then put forward by the government without releasing the 370 submissions the Department received during that time.
Only after it had gone through its first reading did the Department of Communications begin to release the submissions.
Among the civil groups concerned about how it affects citizen’s digital rights, and sex workers who believe it threatens their work, was a letter from Adani Australia’s CEO CEO Lucas Dow as first spotted by Communication Day’s Executive Editor Rohan Pearce.
In the Indian conglomerate operating Australia’s biggest coal mine‘s submission, Dow complains that the company frequently is subjected to online abuse and doxxing.
“Executives and managers from Adani contractors have received a significant volume of phone calls and texts (many threatening and abusive) to their mobile phones,” he wrote.
“Others have had their calendars jammed with meetings to the point where they are unusable, and in extreme cases activists have shown up to people’s personal homes, with their families present, demanding an audience.”
In response, Dow calls on the government to make “online release of personal information without express authorisation of the individual/s” illegal. Which, as Pearce also pointed out, is a bit rich considering that Adani has literally had a private investigator photograph the nine-year-old daughter of an activist while she was walked to school by her father.
But hey, seems like privacy is more important when you’re the one who’s being deprived.
Dow also threw his support behind the proposed 24 hour take down deadline for platforms, while claiming that claims by Adani “are rarely responded to or supported”.
The Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications’ report into the Online Safety Act is due out today, with the Bill expected to be passed in the coming weeks.