Hi all.. just got back from holidays.. the saga continues I see! Just on FOS - they wouldn't be pushing P&B about privacy per se - it's not their concern. It's more likely that P&B has moved to withdraw from FOS because the complaints (as seen by P&B) are without merit, and simply putting barriers up for their collection activities. That said, I think the complaints are entirely with merit. P&B obviously don't. I wonder what action the PC will take once they all get back from their holidays...

The AFP only investigate crimes, and the privacy act doesn't have much criminal stuff in it.. just some obscure credit things? Government agencies _hate_ it when you cc stuff between regulators. From a practical standpoint, though, anything you CC to ASIC will probably just get ignored. This law has only been assented to on Tuesday this week.. it hasn't actually commenced operation yet. Given the structure it puts in place, I'd imagine there'll be a fairly lengthy transitional period before ASIC will investigate breaches of it.

I've been lurking following this thread with interest. I've had problems with Veda before and this thread came up in a Google search. it seems like quite a saga! One thing I can say though is that from my previous dealings with the privacy commissioner, what you've quoted above from them isn't exactly true. They do have teams that do what they call (I think) own motion inquiries.. they mentioned that they were going to do one on Veda on the issue I complained about. However they way they explained it to me, an own motion thingy isn't any different to a normal investigation .. probably won't achieve much! Oh P&B will just love that I dunno about this. The PC deals with each complaint on its own - they wouldn't even confirm to me when I complained that they had other complaints against Veda!! EVen though common sense suggests that they must have had some... weird. That said, I doubt making more complaints will really make any difference.. this time of year government departments all close down and they have heaps of staff leave. Chances are making more complaints will just slow the PC down in dealing with the ones it already has. I love bureaucrats!