Oracle calls Google data collection "unfair, unrepentant and unrestrained"

Oracle has sharply criticised the “unfair, unrepentant and unrestrained” data collection practices of digital platforms like Google and Meta, and has called for a revised Privacy Act to give Australians better protection and require greater transparency in data collection.

The tech giant’s calls come in a submission to the Attorney General’s review of the Act, one of 235 published late last week.

“Not only do the platforms collect unnecessary amounts of data from consumers,” the submission states, but “consumers do not and cannot know the true extent of the personal information collection they are ‘agreeing’ to.

“Platforms are even less transparent about how consumers’ personal information will be monetised and used.”

Oracle also said it considers privacy reform to be urgent, saying without reform, “the egregious behaviour of Google and other digital platforms … will continue”.

The submission highlights a current failing of the Privacy Act, that it does not define “disclosure”, and that this provides a loophole for digital platforms.

Those organisations, Oracle explained, don’t disclose personal data in their advertising-driven business model – rather, they act as “brokers to consumers’ personal information, matching buyers of advertisements with consumers”.

Such sharing of personal information should be covered by a new definition of disclosure, “to ensure consumers are protected from abuses”.

Oracle also stated that tracking should always require consent, with an unqualified right to withhold consent – meaning that declining to be tracked does not stop someone from accessing a service. 

The submission also called for better protection of children and teenagers in any new Privacy Act, and for consistent reforms in that act and in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s digital platforms regulation to address how abuse of personal information feeds anti-competitive behaviour by the digital platforms.