Police Quiz Trade Me About Drugs, Stolen Goods, Child Exploitation
July 12, 2018 | Other
New Zealanders are starting to think a bit more about who holds their data, the country's biggest auction site says.
Trade Me has released its latest Transparency Report, in which it details the requests it receives from police and government departments for information about its members.
When members sign up for a Trade Me account, they are told via its privacy policy terms and conditions that the site may release account and other personal information when it is appropriate for legal compliance or law enforcement, to facilitate legal processes or to apply the site's terms and conditions, among other instances.
The site received 1348 inquiries from police in the 2018 year and 447 from other government departments.
Most police inquiries related to stolen goods, followed by drugs and non-delivery of goods,
But there were also 79 inquiries that related to homicides or missing people and 58 that concerned child exploitation. Wellington users were the subject of the highest number of police requests for information.
"This year, 69 per cent of police requests were made via the Privacy Act, 4 per cent were made under a production order and the remaining 27 per cent did not see any information released," said Trade Me's head of policy and compliance, James Ryan.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was responsible for the most government agency inquiries, followed by the Ministry of Social Development and the Commerce Commission. But even the Earthquake Commission made one request.
MBIE's queries included those from the Companies Office, Immigration NZ, the Insolvency and Trustee Service and WorkSafe, among others.
The Ministry of Health was concerned about laser pointers and the Ministry of Primary Industries requested information relating to biosecurity.
"We only release information when it's legally requested of us and we're satisfied it's appropriate. If we feel a request is too broad or insufficient, we push back and we did that 22 times last year," Ryan said.
Trade Me said there had been a noticeable surge in interest from members in what data was being held about them, after Facebook and Cambridge Analytica's information sharing scandal came to light.
New Zealanders can request, under principle nine of the Privacy Act, that agencies delete any individual data held.
Trade Me reported another surge in requests for information about privacy after it revealed its new privacy policy on June 6.
"We reckon that the GDPR (the new EU privacy law) coming into effect and the heightened awareness of privacy due to the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook media coverage has resulted in greater public awareness of privacy, which in our opinion can only be a good thing."
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- Article originally on stuff.co.nz.
