Building on previous Parliamentary Library publications, this paper takes up the story of privacy law reform from 1996 onwards. The paper begins by distinguishing between different categories of privacy (pages 1-3). It then considers recent developments and proposed developments in various jurisdictions, including Canada, the US and the UK. This discussion takes in issues relating to the protection of privacy in the private sector where the key issue is whether law makers follow the self-regulatory model, as currently preferred in the US and at the federal level in Australia, or whether a co-regulatory/legislative approach is taken, as in New Zealand. Much may depend on what is found to be adequate' protection under the EU Data Protection Directive (page 20). The one constant feature of the debate on privacy over recent years, especially as this has related to the protection of privacy in the private sector, has been the concern to establish a nationally consistent regime (page 11).

The immediate response to the long-running privacy debate in NSW is considered in the next section of the paper which takes as its focus the introduction in NSW of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998. This Act is directed to the State public sector only. It does not cover the private sector; nor does it cover State owned corporations (pages 20-33).

NSW legislation dealing with video surveillance in the workplace is dealt with separately (pages 33-36); while the last section of the paper comments on two further issues, namely, the surveillance of e-mail communications in the workplace and the implications of Internet communication generally for the protection of privacy (pages 36-42).