Australian Government commits to developing data protection laws for children

The Australian Government has committed to developing the country’s first data protection law for children. 

The Children’s Online Privacy Code has potential implications for the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector as it may contain restrictions on how children’s images are shared in online environments, including through being enhanced or altered with artificial intelligence, being used in marketing or promotional materials, and being included in videos which are shared or stored online. 

The development of the Code forms part of a package of reforms to Australia’s privacy law, which include creating the right to sue for serious invasions of privacy and the criminalization of doxing, or the malicious release of personal data. 

The reforms have been prompted by increased reports that children’s personal data has been exploited to secretly surveil them in their online learning environments and in their private lives; used to target them with harmful content; or manipulated into sexually explicit ‘deep fakes’ of other children.

Australia has long relied on self- or co-regulatory models of governance, which lets companies write and oversee their own rules. This, Human Rights Watch argues, has resulted in “drastically weaker protections for children.” 

“It is significant that the government has broken with the past and given an independent, expert regulator the mandate and enforcement powers to protect children’s best interests over commercial ones,” a HRW spokesperson said.

“By committing to a Children’s Online Privacy Code, the government has followed through on its promise to require online providers and companies to uphold the best interests of children when handling their personal data.” 

The government has directed the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to draft the code, and has given the regulator three years and AU$3 million (US$2 million) to do so. 

HRW has called on the Australian information commissioner’s office to consult with children on developing comprehensive protections for their full range of rights, so that they can safely learn, grow, and play online as they do in the physical world.

Learn more about this development here.