An article regarding Apple upgrading privacy much to the dislike of facebook.
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As far as I am concerned there should be no such thing as commercial-in-confidence in most spheres of government activity. Sure, if itâs defence procurement or a national security agency, I get it. Otherwise public scrutiny must be an unavoidable part of doing business with government i.e. taking my money.
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Having been on both sides of the fence, commercial in confidence protects the bidding parties. Often there is business financial and IP information which would be of high interest to competitors. Disclosing such information may also compromise future tenders and the competitive tender process.
Internal government workings shouldnât fall under commercial in confidence as they arenât commercial in the real sense. If government doesnât want something released, it could always be taken to cabinet and protected by disclosure rules applying to such documents.
As have I. I am speaking with my taxpayer hat on. Iâm paying for it.
Relating it back to the original topic ⊠âcrucial documents about the public benefits of the proposal should remain secretâ ⊠it is not so easy to tie that to intellectual property - and there is absolutely every reason for the public to want to scrutinise yet more overdevelopment and environmental degradation. Part and parcel of democracy is that the public must be able to make informed judgement about the wisdom of decisions made on the publicâs behalf. That means fully disclosing costs (in every sense of the word) and benefits (of any kind).
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Itâs the documents relating to the infrastructure agreement. These could contain information about contractor and construction costs etc which possibly shouldnât be disclosed. I canât see why extracts of the agreement which present the infrastructure contribution community benefits couldnât be releasedâŠor an overview of the proposed infrastructure as part of the agreement.
Edit. Information about the project can be found hereâŠ
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What could possibly go wrong? 
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This is sometimes the case, but mainly applies during the tender process. It is possible to contain public and protected clauses in one contract.
The Commonwealth has for years required that contracts should not be classified unless there is a clear, compelling reason to protect buyer or seller information. The fact of and reason for their classification must be published on AusTender.
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Some State GoCs also have similar provisions where they can, if they chose, to publish the winning and other tenders. Information such as the schedule or rates, disbursements, penalties etc are excluded for obvious reasonsâŠbut the total contract value is published.
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Another article regarding Facebookâs behaviour with persons under 18.
What are these obvious reasons of which you speak? 
I would have thought that penalties absolutely should be disclosed. When a project goes south it is in the interests of both the successful tenderer and the government to keep it quiet - and avoid public scrutiny, criticism by Her Majestyâs Loyal Opposition, etc.
I think we need to move the window, reset expectations, about what is acceptable to keep secret in a contract paid for by the taxpayer and what will unavoidably be disclosed.
I agree. While it may be OK to keep such details secret during the process why can we not know all the details once the tender is awarded?
It seems to me the reason details are secret is the participants all like it that way, not that the public interest is served.
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Penalties under a contract for delays, forced majeure, breach of contract and such like. For contracts these are usually part of the financial agreement between the two parties (supplier and client) and is commercial in confidence between the two parties. Such information can also used as part of the financial risk assessment of tenders.
Such information, including suppliers, contractors and subcontractors is valuable information to action groups. It allows them to start to target these groups as an avenue to delay, frustrate or impose additional costs on the proponent (either private or public). There are recent examples where this has occurred and has been used as a method when the accepted review and appeal processed have not gone the way of those who are against the decision being made.
So you keep saying - and Iâm saying it shouldnât be.
Ah well that is a completely different kettle of fish i.e. activists rather than competitors.
Even so, I am not convinced that the right answer is to keep the penalties (or other contractual details) secret.
I would be curious as to what one such recent example is.
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Adani
If this does occur, there is potential that many business may decline to tender for government contracts and the government/taxpayer may get third rate services delivered as a result.
If a business has a competitive advantage over another, the last thing they wish for is their tender/contract which outlines this competitive advantage given to anyone who is interested.
There are commercial terms that are reasonably confidential, and there are total amounts that are in the public interest. Publishing a contract value of $1 million is a bit less helpful than including a line item blow by blow description of what it includes.
As far as penalties, they are on one side, but the service levels contracted should also reasonably be in the public record on the other side. Whether they met them or not can be arguable, clear cut, or debatable, but even if they fall over in terrible style on the next tender (unless it has changed in the past decade) government agencies have been âadvisedâ they are to takerall claims at face value, no questions to be asked excepting references. And if one buys a lemon one is less inclined to brag about it when called for a reference, and thus usually couch the âtestimonialâ rather than to indicate one has a seriously bad contractor.
If a company wants public money it should be willing to operate under public scrutiny. I conducted a number of reasonably high value federal procurements and they were audited as best practice. The amount of confidentiality and secrecy was fairly limited to bits that would give or telegraph competitive information. That was generally limited to the âbill of goodsâ proposed.
If one/government prefers to protect business rather than the public as it seems is increasingly common, I am happy to no longer be part of it.
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One controversial area is where the successful tenderer is non-compliant but selected nevertheless. There may be legitimate reasons for that but if their tender is kept secret except at a very high level (i.e. details are not released) then the unsuccessful tenderers donât get to cry foul and the Opposition doesnât get to cry corruption (or conflict of interest).
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A new one, at least on me. Yahoo pushed a list of my recovery devices and emails for verification/addition as a security check. At the bottom⊠oh joy, targeted advertising⊠I passed
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No real surprises with that.
All the safeguards in the world count for nothing if non-compliance rate by police is about 99.5%. Thatâs pretty shoddy by even the lowest of the low standards.
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How much is data worth?
PC Gamer has observed that the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset (which requires a Facebook login to use) is $299 USD. Meanwhile the business targeted version which doesnât require a Facebook login is $799 USD (plus an annual âService feeâ).
Is it possible the data Facebook is harvesting makes up for that cost discrepancy? After all youâre effectively allowing Facebook access to how you move, and camera data.
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Faa**$%^ - that sort of thing should be illegal.
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