Privacy concerns and the purchasing of travel services online

The travel industry has come to rely heavily on information and communication technologies to facilitate relations with consumers. Compiling consumer data profiles has become easier and it is generally thought that this has led to an increase in consumers' privacy concerns, which may have an adverse impact on their willingness to purchase online. Three specific aspects of privacy that have received attention from researchers are unauthorized secondary use of data, invasion of privacy, and errors. A study was undertaken to examine the effects of these factors on prior purchase of travel services via the Internet and future purchase probability. No evidence was found to indicate that such privacy concerns affect online purchase behavior within the travel industry. Managerial implications are discussed.

Privacy legislation and research

To the Editor: The Victorian Health Records Act 2001 became operational on 1 July 2002. This legislation provides important protection for the individual against misuse of health information through the establishment of Health Privacy Principles. We support the spirit of this legislation, but would like to draw attention to its potential effects on multicentre research and disease surveillance...

Privacy : bad for your health?

TO THE EDITOR: In Australia, personal and health information that identifies an individual cannot be used or disclosed for research without specific requirements being met.1 Even if these requirements are met, data custodians may still refuse access if their views are discordant with those of the relevant human research ethics committee (HREC). It is now evident that there are adverse consequences of this well-meaning legislation...

Monitoring and benchmarking government policies and actions to improve the healthiness of food environments : a proposed Government Healthy Food Environment Policy Index

Government action is essential to increase the healthiness of food environments and reduce obesity, diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and their related inequalities. This paper proposes a monitoring framework to assess government policies and actions for creating healthy food environments. Recommendations from relevant authoritative organizations and expert advisory groups for reducing obesity and NCDs were examined, and pertinent components were incorporated into a comprehensive framework for monitoring government policies and actions. A Government Healthy Food Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI) was developed, which comprises a ‘policy’ component with seven domains on specific aspects of food environments, and an ‘infrastructure support’ component with seven domains to strengthen systems to prevent obesity and NCDs. These were revised through a week-long consultation process with international experts. Examples of good practice statements are proposed within each domain, and these will evolve into benchmarks established by governments at the forefront of creating and implementing food policies for good health. A rating process is proposed to assess a government's level of policy implementation towards good practice. The Food-EPI will be pre-tested and piloted in countries of varying size and income levels. The benchmarking of government policy implementation has the potential to catalyse greater action to reduce obesity and NCDs.

A proposed approach to monitor private-sector policies and practices related to food environments, obesity and non-communicable disease prevention

Private-sector organizations play a critical role in shaping the food environments of individuals and populations. However, there is currently very limited independent monitoring of private-sector actions related to food environments. This paper reviews previous efforts to monitor the private sector in this area, and outlines a proposed approach to monitor private-sector policies and practices related to food environments, and their influence on obesity and non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention. A step-wise approach to data collection is recommended, in which the first (‘minimal’) step is the collation of publicly available food and nutrition-related policies of selected private-sector organizations. The second (‘expanded’) step assesses the nutritional composition of each organization's products, their promotions to children, their labelling practices, and the accessibility, availability and affordability of their products. The third (‘optimal’) step includes data on other commercial activities that may influence food environments, such as political lobbying and corporate philanthropy. The proposed approach will be further developed and piloted in countries of varying size and income levels. There is potential for this approach to enable national and international benchmarking of private-sector policies and practices, and to inform efforts to hold the private sector to account for their role in obesity and NCD prevention.

Public Economics and the Assessment of Tourism Developments and Policies

Public economics covers both topics in welfare economic of social (as opposed to private) interest and aspects of public finance. This chapter considers the application of two methods of social economic evaluation of tourist developments, namely, social cost-benefit analysis and economic impact analysis. The role of social cost-benefit analysis in the assessment of tourism is illustrated by its application to the evaluation of inbound tourism. This is followed by a discussion of taxes on tourism and subsidies to promote it. The principle focus is on hotel room taxes. The analysis of taxes on tourism involves both public finance and welfare economics issues. The scope for and desirability of applying the user-pays principle to tourism is then examined.

Developing a Libyan information privacy framework

This thesis considers how an information privacy system can and should develop in Libya. Currently, no information privacy system exists in Libya to protect individuals when their data is processed. This research reviews the main features of privacy law in several key jurisdictions in light of Libya's social, cultural, and economic context. The thesis identifies the basic principles that a Libyan privacy law must consider, including issues of scope, exceptions, principles, remedies, penalties, and the establishment of a legitimate data protection authority. This thesis concludes that Libya should adopt a strong information privacy law framework and highlights some of the considerations that will be relevant for the Libyan legislature.

Tension between privacy and justice : ordering medical tests

Courts set guidelines for when genetic testing would be ordered - medical testing - life insurers - use of test results - confidentiality.

Home and the embodiment of privacy

A home is an embodiment of human privacy, apart from providing shelter, security and several other functions. Achieving the desired level of privacy at home is very important in Muslim societies. Privacy is intended to protect the female members of the family from strangers, especially while entertaining guests at home. One way of controlling levels of exposure of the domestic domains to strangers is by controlling privacy levels. This research will investigate perceptions of privacy among Australian Muslims when entertaining guests at their homes. This research will also investigate the extent that modesty (achieved through both appearance and design) acts as the balancing factor in achieving a family’s desired levels of privacy while also affording them the capacity to be hospitable to guests. This research will use a qualitative approach to investigate Australian Muslim homes around Queensland, predominantly in the Brisbane area. A total number of 20 to 60 participants (10 to 30 males, 10 to 30 females) ranging from 25 to 55 years old will be interviewed. Ideally, participants will be those who have children or extended families (parents or siblings) living in the house. The data will be coded and analysed for the purpose of generating new knowledge for architects and designers when designing Muslim homes. It will also extend the current body of knowledge related to privacy mechanisms in housing designs, thereby benefitting architects and designers in the future.

Equal access to the opportunities available? Equity and diversity laws and policies in Australia

Australia has been populated for more than 40,000 years with Indigenous Australians joined by European settlers only 230 years ago. The first settlers consisted of convicts from more than 28 countries and members of the British army who arrived in 1788 to establish a British penal colony. Mass migration in the nineteenth century with one and a half million immigrants from Europe, principally from the United Kingdom and Ireland (Haines and Shlomowitz, 1992), established the continent as an Anglo society in the Pacific. In the twentieth century immigrants came from many European countries and in the latter decades from many parts of Asia and the Middle East (Collins, 1991, pp.10-13). In the 21st century Australia has an ethnically and culturally diverse population. The original Indigenous population of Australia accounts for approximately 460,000 or 2.5 per cent of the total population (ABS, 2006a). Estimates are that around 4.5m. persons in the population (close to 20 per cent), were born outside Australia with the majority of these arriving from Europe, principally the United Kingdom, and New Zealand (ABS, 2006b). Like many other countries, Australia has a legacy of discrimination and inequality in employment. Propelled by racist ideologies and the male breadwinner ideology, Indigenous Australians, and non-European immigrants, and women were barred from certain jobs and paid less for their work than any white male counterpart. These conditions were legally sanctioned through the industrial relations system and other laws in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Since the 1960s a dramatic change has occurred in social policy and national legislation and Australia today has an extensive array of laws which forbid employment discrimination on race, ethnicity, gender and many other characteristics, and other approaches which promote proactive organizational plans and actions to achieve equity in employment. This chapter outlines these developments.

Stagnancy in Indonesia’s reformed state asset management policies and practices : a wicked problem?

The policies and regulations governing the practice of state asset management have emerged as an urgent question among many countries worldwide for there is heightened awareness of the complex and crucial role that state assets play in public service provision. Indonesia is an example of such country, introducing a ‘big-bang’ reform in state asset management laws, policies, regulations, and technical guidelines. Indonesia exemplified its enthusiasm in reforming state asset management policies and practices through the establishment of the Directorate General of State Assets in 2006. The Directorate General of State Assets have stressed the new direction that it is taking state asset management laws and policies through the introduction of Republic of Indonesia Law Number 38 Year 2008, which is an amended regulation overruling Republic of Indonesia Law Number 6 Year 2006 on Central/Regional Government State Asset Management. Law number 38/2008 aims to further exemplify good governance principles and puts forward a ‘the highest and best use of assets’ principle in state asset management. The purpose of this study is to explore and analyze specific contributing influences to state asset management practices, answering the question why innovative state asset management policy implementation is stagnant. The methodology of this study is that of qualitative case study approach, utilizing empirical data sample of four Indonesian regional governments. Through a thematic analytical approach this study provides an in-depth analysis of each influencing factors to state asset management reform. Such analysis suggests the potential of an ‘excuse rhetoric’; whereby the influencing factors identified are a smoke-screen, or are myths that public policy makers and implementers believe in, as a means to ex-plain stagnant implementation of innovative state asset management practice. Thus this study offers deeper insights of the intricate web that influences state as-set management innovative policies to state asset management policy makers; to be taken into consideration in future policy writing.

Privacy enhancements for hardware-based security modules

The increasing growth in the use of Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) towards identification and authentication of a security endpoint have raised numerous privacy and security concerns. HSMs have the ability to tie a system or an object, along with its users to the physical world. However, this enables tracking of the user and/or an object associated with the HSM. Current systems do not adequately address the privacy needs and as such are susceptible to various attacks. In this work, we analyse various security and privacy concerns that arise when deploying such hardware security modules and propose a system that allow users to create pseudonyms from a trusted master public-secret key pair. The proposed system is based on the intractability of factoring and finding square roots of a quadratic residue modulo a composite number, where the composite number is a product of two large primes. Along with the standard notion of protecting privacy of an user, the proposed system offers colligation between seemingly independent pseudonyms. This new property when combined with HSMs that store the master secret key is extremely beneficial to a user, as it offers a convenient way to generate a large number of pseudonyms using relatively small storage requirements.

Threshold privacy preserving keyword searches

We consider the following problem: users of an organization wish to outsource the storage of sensitive data to a large database server. It is assumed that the server storing the data is untrusted so the data stored have to be encrypted. We further suppose that the manager of the organization has the right to access all data, but a member of the organization can not access any data alone. The member must collaborate with other members to search for the desired data. In this paper, we investigate the notion of threshold privacy preserving keyword search (TPPKS) and define its security requirements. We construct a TPPKS scheme and show the proof of security under the assumptions of intractability of discrete logarithm, decisional Diffie-Hellman and computational Diffie-Hellman problems.