‘Caught the department by surprise’: Emails reveal Albanese made anti-doxxing call without advice

In February, following the publication of the personal details of members of a WhatsApp group of almost 600 Jewish creatives, journalists and academics, the prime minister signalled changes to doxxing laws in a strongly worded interview with 2GB’s Chris O’Keefe. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the publication of the members’ details “completely unacceptable”, and said he had asked the attorney-general to bring forward legislation in response to an existing review of the Privacy Act. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the changes would be brought forward “as soon as possible”. 

The government’s rushed response was criticised in some quarters, with academics and lawyers saying that current legislation can already apply to doxxing — using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend is already an offence under Commonwealth and equivalent state legislation around the country. 

New documents obtained by Crikey reveal that government agencies were taken by surprise by the prime minister’s decision, and that he decided to move forward on the legislation without new advice. 

A freedom of information request was made by Crikey to the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, requesting advice given to the commissioner on changes to doxxing laws after the Nine papers’ story on the WhatsApp leak, as well as relevant inter-agency communications including the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Attorney-General’s Department, Department of Communications and the Arts and the Prime Minister’s Office, on top of any relevant legal advice. 

The Office of the eSafety Commissioner found two documents within the scope of Crikey’s request, and released both under freedom of information laws. 

The first was a February 13 email from Morag Bond, the executive manager of industry regulation and legal services at the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, to Toby Dagg, the general manager of the regulatory operations group, as well as other staff, marked as “high importance”. 

Bond asked whether the Office of the eSafety Commissioner had been contacted at all “regarding the doxxing announcements this morning”. 

“I got the impression that the announcement may have caught the department by surprise,” Bond wrote. 

The other is an email on February 18 from Dagg to several senior officials including Bond and the Commissioner herself, Julie Inman Grant. 

In that second email, Dagg mentioned that the Attorney-General’s Department was planning to put in place a public consultation on the changes to the Privacy Act. Dagg noted the office faces “challenges … in relation to doxxing in its simple form, where there is no accompanying intent discernible to cause serious harm or where we can’t make out that material incites, instructs or promotes crime and violence”. 

Crikey asked Victoria Police whether any charges had been laid concerning the leaked WhatsApp group. After two days, Victoria Police replied simply: “The investigation remains ongoing.” When pressed, a spokesperson for Victoria Police told Crikey: “If the investigation’s ongoing, there hasn’t been any charges laid.”

The pro-Palestine activists responsible for publishing the information of the WhatsApp group members made a statement on social media on February 11, saying that the decision provided “critical insight into how Zionists operate in so-called progressive arts, academic and media spaces”. 

The activists disputed a number of claims made in media reporting, such as in The Age, and said that the WhatsApp chat was leaked by a member of the chat, described by them as a whistleblower. 

“There were no addresses shared. There were no phone numbers shared. There were no emails shared. These were deliberately redacted. There were no private photographs, and certainly no photographs of children shared,” they said. 

While the review of the Privacy Act, which began under the Morrison government, didn’t reference the word “doxxing”, it did cover the concept of “de-identification”. The Albanese government agreed with the majority of the reforms proposed by the review, including a consultation on introducing a criminal offence for “malicious re-identification of de-identified information where there is an intention to harm another or obtain an illegitimate benefit”. 

That consultation was announced on March 10 this year, opened on March 11, and will run until March 28. 

A second freedom of information request was made by Crikey to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, in similar terms to the first — that is, requesting advice provided to the prime minister about proposed changes to doxxing laws. The request also sought legal advice received by the prime minister relating to the definition of “doxxing”, or what language may be used in an amended Privacy Act to define acts described as “doxxing” by the prime minister in his interview with 2GB. 

Crikey’s request for access to these documents was refused on the basis that the documents didn’t exist. 

The Office of the eSafety Commissioner defines doxxing as “the intentional online exposure of an individual’s identity, private information or personal details without their consent”, and says that it can refer to several different practices including:

• Deanonymising doxxing — revealing the identity of someone who was previously anonymous
• Targeting doxxing — revealing specific information about someone that allows them to be contacted or located 
• Delegitimising doxxing — revealing sensitive or intimate information about someone that can damage their credibility or reputation

“The government had already committed to stronger privacy protections for Australians in its response to the landmark review of the Privacy Act,” a government spokesperson told Crikey.

“The government is now bringing forward that legislation, and in addition to the proposals in the review, will be including additional measures to protect Australians from doxxing.”