A new guide for technology workers in Australia aims to encourage industry employees to become whistleblowers when they witness wrongdoing by organisations and digital platforms.

The Technology-Related Whistleblowing guide, released on Monday by advocates from the Human Rights Law Centre, Reset Tech Australia, Psst, and Digital Rights Watch summarises existing laws and protections for raising concerns about potentially harmful impacts of technology.

It builds on similar resources used in the European Union and United States, where technology whistleblowers have helped trigger legislative changes in the wake of events such as Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.

“More people than ever in Australia are being exposed to the harm caused by new technologies, digital platforms, and artificial intelligence," the four organisations said in a statement.

"But amidst important policy debate, the role of whistleblowers in exposing wrongdoing has been largely disregarded."

Australia’s “demonstrably weak regulations around privacy and data protection” meant the country was “an attractive place for unethical and unscrupulous business practices”, the guide argued.

American whistleblower Frances Haugen, who disclosed internal Facebook documents about the platform’s potential harms in 2021, contributed a forward to the new whistleblowing guide.

“The Australian government continues to signal big moves for tech accountability, but its project remains nascent,” Haugen wrote.

“Australia is, in many respects, a testing centre for many of the world’s incumbent tech giants and an incubator for the good, bad, and the unlawful.”

Haugen said “a wide variety of tech scandals” had come to light in Australia in 2024, and there were “almost certainly more” happening inside technology companies and related organisations.

Indeed, this year has seen domestic scandals involving the likes of software company WiseTech Global, AI marketing startup Metigy, and medical imaging firm I-Med Radiology Network.

“Few people, if any at all, actively set out to be whistleblowers,” Haugen said.

“It is a difficult and hazardous path, but sometimes it’s the only path we have to serve the public interest, and even save lives.”

While Haugen welcomed the introduction of new privacy, online safety, competition, and consumer protection laws in Australia, she said it was “unfair and ineffectual” to place the burden of holding the tech industry to account solely with regulators.

'Whistleblowers need to be protected, not punished’

Some Australian policians, advocacy groups, and academics have pushed for greater protections for whistleblowers, including the establishment of a national body to enforce the country’s various whistleblower protection laws.

A parliamentary inquiry earlier this year said it “received evidence that the multiplicity of whistleblower protection laws is creating confusion and leading to poor outcomes for whistleblowers and employers”, and the patchwork of laws excluded sectors such as large professional services firms.

The Technology-Related Whistleblowing guide has provided some hypothetical examples of workers who could use its information to become whistleblowers.

“They could be a public servant, a sector-specific startup, a company or government department involved in procurement, a digital marketing company involved in the ‘data brokering’ industry – the list of possibilities is extensive,” the guide said.

One hypothetical example states, “A medical bookings platform collects and stores identifiable details of Australian users’ visits to general practitioners.

“They ignore regulatory guidelines to store the data more securely and the company eventually suffers a massive data breach, exposing details of thousands of Australians to hackers.”

Another hypothetical example reads, “A real estate company procures an algorithm that draws upon inferencing techniques to ‘rank’ prospective tenants.”

Kieran Pender, associate legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, said “while the tech whistleblowing wave hasn’t yet made its way to Australia”, he hoped the guide would empower workers to speak up about wrongdoing.

“Regulators must also take technology-related whistleblowing more seriously, including by ensuring they can receive lawful and protected disclosures,” he said.

“At a time of rapid regulatory change in how technology is used in Australia, whistleblowers need to be protected, not punished, in holding technology companies accountable.”

Alice Dawkins, executive director at Reset Tech Australia, said there was “undoubtedly more to come out” about harmful conduct by technology companies.

"We know it will take time to progress comprehensive protections for Australians for digital harms,” she said.

“It’s especially urgent to open up the gate for public accountability via whistleblowing.”