Australian Cross-Border Public Interest Determinations

The Australian Information Commissioner has made two temporary "public interest determinations" to permit the cross-border disclosure of personal information of beneficiaries of international money transfers by authorized-deposit taking institutions to overseas financial institutions for a period of 12 months from March 2014. The Reserve Bank of Australia ("RBA") and the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd ("ANZ") made public interest applications to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to seek declarations that they were able to continue their existing practice of information disclosure when processing international money transfers without breaching the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). In making public interest determinations, the Information Commissioner must be satisfied that the public interest in doing the act that potentially breaches Australian privacy laws substantially outweighs the public interest in adhering to the relevant privacy