The Australian Government should develop a National Risk Mitigation Strategy to deal with our over-reliance on Google and Facebook, according to a new report for the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology.

In the wake of threats by Google and Facebook to scale back or close services in Australia should the Government proceed with plans to charge them for news content, the new report from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology ‘Tech-Xit: Can Australia survive without Google and Facebook?’ identifies serious risks to Australian businesses, government services and consumers if services were withdrawn.

The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology has made a submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) regarding its draft news bargaining code, with close of submissions today.

With the incidence of workplace monitoring increasing during the pandemic lockdown, new research shows that workers should be compensated for the secondary use of data gathered in the course of their employment.

The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology have made a submission to a NSW inquiry into the future of work, arguing that information gathered through workplace monitoring and surveillance should be treated as a work output and covered by workplace laws and regulations.

An open letter today urges global tech giant Google to stop the scare tactics and negotiate a fair agreement with media companies to share advertising revenue in return for the journalism content they currently use for free.

The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsibility Technology has today published an Open Letter to Google, responding to Google’s Open Letter to Australians that the company posted earlier this week.

The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology has today endorsed a global statement from citizen and consumers groups, warning of the negative consequences of Google’s proposed takeover of Fitbit.

Consumer and citizen groups have significant concerns that Google’s proposed takeover of wearables manufacturer Fitbit would be a game-changer not only for how people interact with the online world but also for digital and related health markets. Regulators around the world – in particular those concerned with antitrust compliance and data privacy – must therefore give it their utmost attention. This will be a test case for how regulators address the immense power the tech giants exert over the digital economy and their ability to expand their ecosystems unchecked.

A new report by The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology has identified coordinated networks of Pro-Trump and QAnon social media clusters at the centre of coordinated efforts to disseminate disinformation about COVID-19, particularly the conspiracy theory that China engineered the virus as a bioweapon.

The theory that COVID-19 was engineered by China has been embraced by the US President and elements of his administration.

An alliance of digital rights groups has urged the Morrison Government to fill in obvious gaps in the development of the tracing technology to give it its best chance of winning public trust.

Today, the Morrison Government released the COVID-Safe tracing app asking all Australians to download the technology which is designed to inform them of every person a user has been in contact with.

Human rights and privacy experts have called on Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt to explain privacy and surveillance issues arising from the Federal Government’s recently launched Coronavirus Australia app. The app has been downloaded over 500,000 times in Australia, yet there is little publicly available information about what data is being collected from people and how that private information is being used and kept safe.

New technologies that deploy Artificial intelligence should be assessed for their social impact on citizens before they are allowed to be deployed, according to The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology.

In its submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) discussion paper on human rights and technology, the Centre argues that a formal regulatory regime, rather than voluntary ethical codes, is required to protect the public interest in this time of rapid change.