There is no inherent right to personal privacy in Australia.
In Queensland, anyone can take your photo in a public place and a person can record a conversation with you without asking your permission to do so.
This is Privacy Awareness Week: an annual event we could probably do away with soon, because so little privacy is left to be aware of.
Discussions around privacy used to be fairly linear.
We had clearly private and public facets of our lives.
Personal diaries and letters marked ‘personal and confidential’ were personal.
A closed door was a virtual cone of silence.
Only when we were out in the open were our actions and conversations considered public.
So much has changed since the internet was launched as a niche communication tool 40 years ago.
Private and public have melded.
The privacy horse bolted, with recordings as evidence it has fled.
Our hand-held devices are now rarely used for phone calls, living in our pockets and connecting permanently to the world, recording our searches, our chats, our movements.
They are our cameras, maps, audio recorders, to-do lists, as well as our birthday reminders, dictionaries and encyclopedias.
In our interactions on digital devices, we willingly offer up everything about ourselves.
The prevalent attitude used to be that we were no one special and had nothing to hide, so no one should be particularly interested in us.
But we now know everyday men and women are valuable – and that our data is a commodity.
When we buy an item or seek more information about something, we are directed to tick a box – and we do so mindlessly and because it is an impenetrable hurdle.
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No tick, no entry, no goods.
But clicking and ticking is akin to swinging open the door on our lives, dissolving the walls and granting access to our inner sanctum.
All organisations can now collect, use and disclose huge amounts of personal information.
The practices to keep it safe and the ethics to use it responsibly are out of date.
But still, people are affronted if they perceive their personal privacy has been infringed upon … as if they have any left.
Privacy Awareness Week should remind people that privacy was not taken from them, but something they gave away.
Dr Jane Stephens is a UniSC journalism lecturer, media commentator and writer.
