ALECOMM

DoCS Privacy Manager dragging feet about mass Facebook privacy violations by caseworkers

Details

Category: Privacy

Created: Friday, 25 October 2013 15:31

Written by Alecomm2

Complaints were filed in March this year (2013) when caseworker Amanda Credlin violated the privacy of over thirty people, by intruding into social services support sites and personal facebook pages of victims of social services.  Amanda Credlin has submitted two affidavits, containing almost two hundred pages of peoples personal information.  What's more, this information had absolutely nothing to do with the case she was assigned.  The caseworker then used the information in courts - a mass violation of everybody involveds' privacy, and the magistrate in the matter allowed it - at least on two occasions.

Complaints were filed with the Minister for Community Services in March, and May, and finally acknowledgement of the complaint was received in around about August by the Privacy Manager - based in Tweed Heads - Jann Rowe.

The Privacy Manager (as she is called) wrote two (initial) letters stating that we were not allowed to file complaints on behalf of all the victims who had their privacy violated, and that unless they all completely identified themselves, she would not investigate their privacy violations.  In fact, she stated, ït was not possible to investigate the complaints without the victims identifying themselves.  Regardless of the fact that the Information and Privacy Commission states that we are entitled to file on behalf of all victims, she has refused.  So instead we filed the complaint on behalf of Alecomm - which should have been investigated at least upon receipt of the initial complaint in May - and are still waiting the outcome of the result.

Jann Rowe (Privacy Manager) has recently been involved in other cases at the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, which she was happy for us to resend our complaint to.  In case of ABA vs DoCS - where the department fabricated evidence in order to substantiate providing services that did not exist, Jann Rowe happily defended the department, her own legal personnel even stating on record that the department "is not there to help parents", (but it is obviously okay for them to fabricate evidence to make out that they did).

So you see, we are fully aware why Jann Rowe has quite happily tried to palm us off to the ADT - because she gets a free trip to Sydney and her own legal team to defend the illegal actions of the rogue departmental caseworkers she gets paid to investigate.  Bad luck for her, we already know her unscrupulous tactics and have opped to just await her decision.  Will certainly be interesting to see how the department tries to squirm its way out of blatantly breaking the law - not that this is something new to them.  Hence the drawing out of the Internal Review and hopeful palming off to the ADT.

We have included recent documents of complaints about the privacy violations of many persons on facebook, some who may or may not be aware - that their personal information has been used by disgruntled caseworkers, and collected and stored and used - without their knowledge - in NSW Children's Court matters - in cases completely unrelated to them.  Please ensure you read our desired outcome - which is transfer of the matter to the public prosecutor - as two year penalties and $2000 per violation apply for each time Amanda Credlin, caseworker at DoCS Wagga Wagga - has violated our privacy under the PPIA Act section 62.