Tobacco company uses Freedom Of Information Act to acquire data on Australian youth.
The Australian government has fallen victim to its own Big Brother agenda. Thousands of Victorian school children and teenagers took part in a government funded survey which was used to gauge attitudes towards smoking and alcohol. A survey which promised to remain confidential.
That data has now been handed to tobacco giant British American Tobacco simply for the cost of a Freedom of Information request.
A similar incident occurred last year when the same company used a FOI request to access information from the Cancer Institute of NSW. That request netted the results of yet another confidential survey on adult attitudes toward smoking.
This illustrates the ineptitude of the Australian Government and their ability to keep your personal information secure.
More importantly it highlights just how imperative it is to not let the government know too much about you. The more they know about you, your life and how you think, the more that information can be used against you.
It may not necessarily be the government that abuses that information. It could very well be a global corporation.
Big Brother indeed.
Real News Australia 
Big tobacco play big corporation games. No surprise there. Freedom of information used by anyone wanting access to what the government has. No surprise there either. Information can be used by savvy “folk” to send a directed message to uniformed recipient. Sigh, par for the course. Government able to be lobbied to conduct study at our expense to benefit corporation that couldn’t be bothered to pay for such a study themselves or wish to have the study results “at arms length”, Oh no, never, what news. Please make this viral, I’ve never heard of such manipulation of the system before in my life. 🙂