No further action will be taken over a privacy breach that saw employees of an India-based technology company access recordings from 93 Australian court matters while carrying out transcription work.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has confirmed that Canadian transcription company VIQ Solutions breached its contracts with Australian courts by allowing overseas workers to access the recordings.

However, the privacy watchdog will not investigate the matter further, citing new safeguards introduced by the courts and the fact that VIQ has since entered liquidation.

The OAIC released its findings from preliminary inquiries into VIQ this week.

VIQ Solutions is a Canada-based company that provided transcription services to Australian courts and tribunals.

Earlier this year, ABC News reported that VIQ had subcontracted some transcription work to e24 Technologies, a technology company based in India, potentially exposing sensitive Australian court information to overseas workers.

VIQ entered voluntary administration in March and ceased operating in Australia entirely in July.

OAIC found that VIQ had breached its contracts with Australian courts by allowing a small number of e24 employees to access Australian court recordings.

However, it said the access was the result of an error and that the incident was narrower than initial media reports had suggested.

No further investigation

OAIC said it would not investigate the potential privacy breaches further, largely because VIQ Solutions has entered liquidation and is no longer operating in Australia.

While the company may have breached Australian privacy laws, the watchdog said the circumstances made further investigation unnecessary, particularly given the additional safeguards Australian courts have since introduced to protect sensitive information.

The preliminary inquiry found that VIQ had inadvertently added employees of its Indian subcontractor, e24 Technologies, to its Australian NetScribe workpool platform, which was used to manage court transcription work.

This breached VIQ's contracts with the courts, which expressly prohibited the transfer of data outside Australia.

Between September 2025 and February 2026, five India-based employees were given access to VIQ's Australian court transcription work.

Three of those employees actually accessed recordings while completing transcription tasks, hearing snippets from 93 individual court matters across the Federal Courts.

The Federal Court subsequently reviewed the files that had been accessed and was satisfied that none contained confidential information or material relating to suppressed matters.

OAIC said the “size and scope of the incident was narrower than initial reports suggested”, with “only a small number of Australian court hearing recordings having been temporarily made accessible to several employees of a subcontractor based overseas”.

“The incident was smaller in scale and more confined than media reporting suggested,” the OAIC report said.

“Only a small number of Australian court hearing recordings [were] temporarily made accessible to several employees of a subcontractor based overseas.”

No further punishment

Australian Information Commissioner Elizabeth Tydd said the preliminary findings had been made public to raise awareness of the importance of strong privacy protections.

“The arrangements put in place by Courts in dealing with this sensitive information is an important privacy preserving measure,” Tydd said.

“The publication of this outcome serves to promote compliance by raising awareness of privacy preserving practices. These published outcomes help to promote transparency and support improved privacy practices.

“I trust this report will provide confidence to the community about the steps that this office and the relevant courts took in response to the issue and provide greater understanding about an incident of considerable public concern.”

VIQ continued to provide transcription services to the Federal Court until the end of June, when the court's contingency recording and transcript arrangements came into effect.