Privacy

The Australian Defence Privacy Policy is designed to inform individuals about the way Defence collects, stores, uses and discloses personal information (as defined in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act)). This policy also provides guidance about how you can access, or seek correction of, personal information, held by Defence, about you.

The Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), contained in Schedule 1 of the Privacy Act, regulate how Defence, as an APP entity, collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information.

Use of personal information

The personal information collected may be used by, or disclosed to, other persons within Defence or to other agencies such as other Defence Organisation sections that require this information for official purpose where such use or disclosure is necessary.

Defence will not use or disclose your personal information for any other purposes without first obtaining your expressed or implied consent. Defence may however be required to disclose your personal information without your consent if the disclosure is:

  1. Required or authorised by law (including the Privacy Act 1988).
  2. Required in order to investigate an unlawful activity.
  3. Required by an enforcement body for investigative activities.
  4. Necessary to prevent a serious and imminent threat to a person's life, health or safety.

When you access ForceNet, our server makes a record of your visit and logs the following information to assist with site administration and maintenance:

  • the user's server address;
  • the user's top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc);
  • the date and time of visit to the site; the pages accessed and documents downloaded;
  • the previous site visited (please note: this only applies when the user has accessed ForceNet by following a link to ForceNet from an external site, and only if that external site also does not have a Referrer-Policy which prevents it. There is no visual data captured from ForceNet or any previously visited website); and
  • the type of browser or device used.
  • when an unexpected error occurs, additional technical information is collected about the cause of the error and the device that it occurred on.

As mentioned above, this information is collected primarily for administrative and technical support purposes. However, the information may also be disclosed to:

  1. an Australian Federal, State or Territory investigative authority to support investigations; or
  2. other Commonwealth agencies, where necessary, to perform their statutory obligations.

Sending us emails

When you send Defence an email, our email servers will collect and hold your email address, and the content of that email, for the purpose of responding to, and assisting with, your enquiry. Your email address will not be added to a mailing list unless you supplied it to Defence for that reason.

When emailing Defence, please also provide us with all information relevant to/in support of your query so that Defence may supply an informed response.

Further information

For further information about how:

  1. Defence holds your personal information;
  2. you can apply for access to, or seek a correction of, that personal information; or
  3. to make a written complaint regarding Defence’s management of your personal information,

kindly refer to the Defence Privacy Policy in the above link.

Questions regarding the Defence Privacy Policy may be emailed to the Defence Privacy Office, or sent via regular mail to:

Defence Privacy Office

BP35-1-065

PO Box 7927

CANBERRA BC ACT 2610