The Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) has released a media release explaining why the website What Does My Landlord Own? (WDMLO) was found in breach of the Privacy Act. The Privacy Commissioner decided to publicly comment on the website as it apparently “provides a cautionary example in an increasingly data-driven world”.
Critic Te Ārohi covered WDMLO back in Issue 3. Essentially, the website compiled publicly accessible data from LINZ to allow users to search any address in Aotearoa and find out who owns it and the associated properties that person owns. The issue that the Privacy Commissioner raised was that when data was manipulated it produced a “common name inaccuracy” in which people with the same name were wrongly identified as owning properties that they do not own. This was found to be in breach of Information Privacy Principle 8 which requires agencies to take "steps that are, in the circumstances, reasonable to ensure that the information is accurate, up to date, complete, relevant, and not misleading."
Sunset_flowers, the creators of WDMLO, told Critic Te Ārohi that “the common name inaccuracy is unavoidable” due to the fact that the government records ownership information by full name alone. Further, sunset_flowers claimed that it mitigated the issue by “reframing results from ‘Owned by this person’ to ‘Owned under this name’” and added a description of the limitation on their website. However, the Privacy Commissioner found that these changes were inadequate.
Sunset_flowers further alleged that the Privacy Commissioner is turning a blind eye to the website Terranet, which operates much like WDMLO, but is marketed towards landlords and property managers and is not free. Indeed, Terranet allows anyone to search for properties by owner name, essentially allowing you to look up the address of any homeowner. WDMLO, however, only allowed you to search the other way around (from address to owner), and had filters in place to hide the details of owner-occupiers. “The Commissioner hasn't even acknowledged the existence of Terranet raising serious questions about their values and interests,” said Kat, a spokesperson for sunet_flowers.
Critic Te Ārohi reached out to the Privacy Commissioner to simply ask if they acknowledge that Terranet exists. This was their response: “Under the Privacy Act, agencies that collect and hold personal information have a duty to protect it and respect it to avoid causing harm to people.” Sunset_flowers says that this indicates the Privacy Commissioner’s “blatant double standard” where they “publicly name and shame WDMLO” all while not acknowledging Terranet.
Sunset_flowers told Critic Te Ārohi that “we believe this is because WDMLO aims to empower renters, and challenge the very notion of land ownership, both of which fly against the colonial framework the Office of the Privacy Commissioner exists within. There's no doubt that the Commissioner's decision to shut down WDMLO has won them some gold stars among their government colleagues in Wellington.”
Sunset_flowers have made the software for WDMLO open source. Do with that information what you will.