Privacy Concerns of a jobseeker

As of this week (1/7/2015) the unemployed are being told that they must
sign new contracts with their employment service providers or they risk
being cut off from benefits. If, once those contracts are signed you
refuse to participate in any activity or program or survey then you are
threatened with being cut off from benefits. One of the first requirements
of these new sign-ups is that you fill in a survey which asks a variety of
personal questions which are said to assist in finding work. In April 2013
I attempted to raise concerns over the use of a survey website and the
manner in which the unemployed were being coerced into participating. This
week most people have been given half an hour to sign the contracts or be
cut off from benefits. Because of my previous experience with this matter
I am very distressed to learn that this is now a requirement for getting
benefits as I am aware that the protections of data privacy do not cover
any data which will almost certainly end up overseas. Once those contracts
are signed they will be considered to be voluntary. Before those contracts
are signed we are being threatened with the loss of our benefits with very
little information to assist us and an intimidating threat of being left
without means to pay bills.Much of the detail for what will be required of
us under a compulsory agreement is not yet available , so if we decide
that we are not comfortable with participating in any part of the new
programs we are again threatened with being cut off from benefits.I for
one am not comfortable with signing this contract but because I am
unemployed I am forced to sign it today under duress of losing benefits as
I have no other financial option at this time. As I have mentioned I have
had concerns regarding these programs and the rights of the unemployed to
be properly informed and to have a real choice in the matter instead of
being threatened with the loss of benefits. It is my understanding that
the programs are being presented through Australian based groups but I
also understand that there is still every possibility that the data being
collected in this manner will end up overseas.

As of 2pm today I will have signed my contract and I will have even less
avenue to raise my concerns regarding these matters. I have tried to get
some legal advice and I have been unable to make any difference. I do
believe that this situation breaches privacy and other rights.

As of friday 3rd July I was told by the Manager at my current employment
service that I would be reported to centrelink, I was asking that a letter
be put on file that stated that I would be signing paperwork and filling
in surveys under duress. I was not told what I would be reported for.

I have tried to raise these concerns through a number of government,
welfare and legal avenues and I am always met with responses that I am not
able to pursue my concerns through those avenues.

List of my concerns raised in regards to these programs and the surveys
through Local Representative Shaynne Neumann 8th April 2013.

List of concerns:

Concerns regarding possible breaches of trust and privacy by Employment
Services Queensland (ESQ), relating to their use of the online ViaMe.org
survey.

Concerns regarding the misuse of activity agreement forms and compliance
requirements by the ESQ, to mislead unemployed people (their clients) into
thinking that they have no choice about signing in to the ViaMe survey
website with their names and other personal details and answering over 200
detailed “psychological profiling” questions about themselves.

Concerns regarding the complete absence of information pertaining to
privacy and rights of refusal from ESQ in regards to this survey and the
associated activities. This raises further concerns regarding the motives
behind such lack of transparency.

Concerns regarding details of the ViaMe website Privacy Policy and the
implications regarding the global collection, storage, use and
dissemination of information and data collected by it and its other
related entities and websites. This data is offshore vis a vis Australia.

Concerns regarding ESQ’s collaboration in the coercive bulk data
collection (which they say is compulsory activity) from vulnerable and
captive Australian unemployed persons in their duty of care, to an
offshore entity, to store, use and disseminate via their website,
ViaMe,org and its other nebulous related entities and various websites to
their own unspecified ends.

Concerns that ESQ may be profiting from this vulnerable group, making
compulsory the compliance with a private business arrangement. Eg. as ESQ
is listed as a “client” of “Esher House”, how much money is exchanged for
what service and to whom? Why am I not allowed to know that arrangement,
other than the statement “we are working with a group of psychologists”?
Why is the survey deemed by ESQ to be compulsory activity? To my knowledge
ESQ is bound by government legislation. Can private employment groups
arbitrarily create “compulsory” requirements of their own (even if just to
sell Australian citizens’ data offshore for whatever profits they can
attain over and above the funding they receive from government), the data
from which may conceivably fall into the hands of any corporate interests
for profit, rather than the employment groups genuinely working within
government funding guidelines to provide sincere and actual assistance to
attain work for their unemployed clients? Why is compulsory and
potentially “for profit” offshore data-mining deemed strictly necessary by
ESQ?

Concerns regarding being expected by ESQ to include the maximum amount of
private self-identifying data such as name, date of birth, email address
and so forth. The survey website itself states it only requires postcode
for geographical purposes. ESQ failed to convey the nature of their
specific insistence on me providing more data than required by the survey
site.

Concerns that the nature of their insistence may stem only from a
commercial interest in the sale of “complete” datasets to offshore
interests. The survey may not be considered scientifically valid.

Concerns at other possible abuses deriving from the implementation of
these “positive psychology” based programmes.

Concerns that my questioning of any of this resulted in hostility from ESQ.

Concerns that, if there is indeed nothing for them to “hide” in this
matter, that it “still” amounts to something which they use as a “coercive
tool”. What is the legality of any of this? ESQ refused to answer.

Concerns regarding the handling of my situation when I asked to be
excluded from all activities via their association with Esher House, as
though no practical alternatives or suitable job opportunities exist.

Concerns over the extent to which the programmes being presented as
activities by employment and other services through Esher House and other
similar entities originate from the group/s responsible for the ViaMe
survey, Institute On Character and other related entities.

Concerns regarding the implications of ex US Military individuals behind
“positive psychology” groups and practices in direct relation to
programmes being presented as employment service activities.

Regarding the circumstances for my concerns:

I have some limitations as a Stream Four job seeker. I have a chronic pain
injury from previous work (warehouse work) and have no intention of
putting myself into another job which would aggravate the condition. I
simply need a suitable job which won’t exacerbate the injury. The
following issues fall so far from that basic goal that I cannot begin to
express how disappointed I am in the services being offered by Employment
Services Queensland (ESQ).

As part of my activities agreement with ESQ, I agreed to participate in
group activities provided by them. I was told by my Case Manager that she
was not sure exactly what those group activities would be but that ESQ was
taking a more positive approach and that it would probably include
discussions among the group.

On the first day of my attendance of the group activity I was told by the
case manager that we were all filling out a personality survey on the
computers. When I asked how that worked, my case manager told me that
everyone was signing in to the survey website and filling in a
questionnaire of around 200 questions. I voiced my concern about providing
my details or filling in surveys of any kind online and I asked questions
about the purpose of the survey and the ownership of the survey website.
The case manager would not or could not answer my questions. I kept
voicing my hesitation about filling in anything about myself online but
the case manager did not seem to want to listen to my concern, even though
she did not answer my questions. I felt that I was not being allowed a
choice to say no. At one point she told me not to worry about what the
questions were just to answer them with the first thing that came to mind.
I asked “How do you know that this isn’t information gathering?”. I did
not receive any response. Under duress I then agreed to fill in the
questions only if my name was not in any way attached. the case manager
told me that I could fill in the questions on her login and she began
navigating to the questions. I saw the name. “Institute On Character” at
the bottom of the web-page, I pointed to it and asked, “who is that?”. I
did not get an answer. Later I discovered that the privacy policy
acknowledges that the survey site does not require personal details.

After I had finished filling in the questions the Case Manager filled in
some of the personal details fields such as postcode and education. She
then left the room and returned with a print-out of the results from the
questions I had answered as well as a second form for listing some of
those results in order of the top five responses. She pointed out the
logo, (EsherHouse.org), on the second form and told me that this was a
group of psychologists which Employment Services Queensland was working
with and would be working with from now on and that the list would be used
in the next session. I was surprised to learn that the activities we were
expected to participate in were not provided by ESQ as I had not been
informed about any other organisation or business providing any part of
the group activities until that time. I was, frankly, alarmed by what had
happened and shocked that I was being asked to participate in activities
provided by sources other than ESQ without being properly informed and
without apparently having a choice.

The printout from the survey results show that the survey website is
called ViaMe.org and is being run by an offshore group calling itself
InstituteOnCharacter.org

Following my own concerns, I tried to learn what I could about Esher House
when I arrived home.

EsherHouse.org – CEO listed as; Darren Coppin.
I did not find a list of psychologists working from Esher House, (as
described by my Case Manager), except in direct relation to ViaMe.org and
it’s various other related websites which seem many and include,
ViaCharacter.org, InstituteOnCharacter.org, ViaSurvey.org and many more.

From a conference speaker list (attached): {Darren Coppin leads on the
scientific assessment and development of interventions to improve “Into
Work” and “Sustained Outcomes” for the welfare sector. Four scalable
programs have improved outcomes by 10-20%. Darren works with US, British
and Australian academics and government policy influencers, think tanks
and presents extensively on the welfare marketplace, resilience and
applied psychology.}

I found other websites apparently run by the group calling itself
Institute On Character, all of which appear to be designed to funnel
people to fill in the personality survey.

When I found the privacy statement of the ViaMe survey website I was
shocked to learn that the survey is meant to be voluntary and that
information gathered by the survey would be saved, used and disseminated,
apparently at the discretion of those responsible for the website. Had I
known this beforehand I would not have agreed to take part in the survey
in any way at all.

It is my understanding that in order for Employment Services Queensland to
make use of the ViaMe survey as a client of Esher House they would be
provided with their own access code to the ViaMe website,according to the
guidelines laid out on the ViaCharacter Collaboration page. This would
indicate that Employment Services Queensland would be aware of the
voluntary stipulations pertaining to the survey and seem to be negligent
of informing people of that fact, instead, opting to make people fill in
the survey under duress of activity agreements.

I could find nothing about these organisations/groups or their claims
which I feel would be helpful to me in finding work.

There are claims that the employment programs coming through Esher House
and other related groups are based on a {“proven science” of positive
psychology}.

The theories on which positive psychology are based are not proven
science. The group/s responsible for the programs and theories are in the
process of an aggressive campaign to have the work accepted as science.

A fundamental flaw of this “positive psychology” concept, in my opinion,
is that it is a theory which claims scientific verification through
experiments involving torture and deprivation, primarily relying on
“Learned Helplessness” which, as far as can be determined, was published
as a book after academic rejection.

There are questions of concern from other academics in the field over
issues of human rights, ulterior corporate interests and the ethics of the
theories on which the positive psychology programs are ultimately based as
well as the positive psychology theories themselves.

There are conflicting versions of how the institute on character and the
“positive psychology” movement were initiated, one of the people at the
centre of all of this is Martin Seligman, a psychologist named as having
advised US Military in illegal practices of torture – enhanced
interrogation techniques. Martin Seligman is ex US Military himself and
not the only one I found to be connected with this “positive psychology”
and Institute On Character and related groups.

This raises concerns for the wider implications of subjecting people to
these programmes without their knowledge or consent.

I telephoned my Case Manager and told her that I was not comfortable with
the ViaMe survey and I did not believe that any of the activities coming
through Esher House would help me to find work. I asked to be excluded
from all activities/programs coming through Esher House and I told her
that I would be happy to do anything else but, I repeated, I was not
comfortable with these activities. I offered that I would be happy to sit
at the computer and look for work if that’s what was required but I did
not wish to be part of the group activities coming through Esher House. My
Case Manager said something about putting me in another group and said
that she would get back to me.

When I telephoned the following week regarding a different matter
altogether, my case manager stopped me short to tell me that I was not
able to be put in another group as that group would also be doing Esher
House related activities. She then told me that I would have to find
another employment service provider. I asked her to confirm that she was
telling me that she could not find any other activity to assist me in my
search for work suitable to my circumstances and that she was telling me
to find another employment service provider on the basis that I had asked
to be excluded from activities coming through Esher House. She repeated
that if I did not want to take part in the group activities I would have
to find another employment service provider.

Shocked at being told I would need to find another provider on this basis,
I asked “Is that even legal?” to which I received no response, as if I had
not even asked that question.

After being told by ESQ that I would have to find another employment
service provider I telephoned DEEWR to find out if the ESQ had grounds for
asking me to find another employment service provider under these
circumstances and to confirm for myself whether Esher House is a
legitimate organisation in good standing. That telephone call resulted in
confusing responses to my enquiries so I asked if DEEWR had a list of
business’s that the employment services work with, to which I was told,
“Yes” and that my phone call would be directed to another department (I
don’t recall which department that was). When I tried to explain the
situation to the second person taking my enquiry regarding this matter she
seemed to be misunderstanding my reason for calling, I became upset at her
misunderstanding and asked, “What does Esher House have to do with
anything?”. Instead of getting an answer for this question the person on
the phone referred to the fact that I had signed the activity agreement
and offered that if I wished to find another Service Provider she could
give me the list. At this point in the conversation I realised I would not
be getting answers to my questions and I asked for the list of Service
Providers.

I later found a list for a Jobs Australia Conference which lists Darren
Coppin as a speaker as well as a speaker representing DEEWR, which would
suggest that DEEWR could have confirmed the arrangements between ESQ and
Esher House but I received no such confirmation from DEEWR.

This made me feel that ESQ, as a client of Esher House, are wrongfully and
perhaps illegally taking advantage of the activities agreement forms to
channel people to the ViaMe survey site without proper disclosure and for
some reason which was withheld from me.

I am very concerned that these activities are not compliant with the
employment service provider role of individualised assistance and that the
alarming end result of these activities is bulk offshore data collecting
and profiteering from this most vulnerable and captive group of unemployed
people who are being forced to participate under the duress of compliance
with very little to do with actually finding employment.

The originating websites appear to have been subject to more recent
content changes which may be interesting to note. Among the details I was
not able to later verify was a claim that Darren Coppin was working out of
USQ Toowoomba, although there is still a reference to thesis work on the
Esher House website.

There are any number of further concerns which may be raised in this
matter. Not least of all is a very real danger of unqualified people
judging/labelling individuals as depressed and/or having mental health
issues based on a perceived level of participation and enthusiasm for the
programmes themselves. This is not a professional or responsible
application of psychological understanding.

Speaking for myself at this point in time, I am compelled to wonder; if
these programmes become a normalised part of the employment (and other)
services and I refuse to participate, what choice will I have in my own
needs to find suitable employment?

In the process of writing out these concerns I have also recalled a
separate and possibly significant situation which occurred at Employment
Services Queensland shortly before these “group activities” were
introduced. One of the case managers was asking people to fill in various
questionnaires and sign forms which I believe was a confirmation of having
participated in activities regarding skills workshops. I believe I signed
two of these forms on the advice of that case manager, (not my usual case
manager). I was later concerned that I had signed forms which apparently
meant that I had attended workshops, which I had not, but because I had
not been given copies of the forms I signed I was not certain of their
actual nature or particular context. I am additionally concerned for the
validity of this practice in light of all which has occurred in the
meantime.

Thank you for your time in this matter.

7 comments

  1. Have you contacted your office of the National Welfare Rights Centre. These people are trained legal professionals who deal in Social Security Law. Also, have you contacted the Ombudsman for Social Security about your concerns. Next, have you considered contacting the Queensland Law Society to find a lawyer who would not charge you. Finally, have you made your case known to a Human Rights Lawyer or have you written to the Human Rights Commissioner. If you check Hansard, you will find every piece of Legislation, including the newest “upgrade” for how the unemployed need to “contract” with their Job Network Provider. When it comes to Contractual Law, the simplest understanding is an “agreement between one or more parties, where all parties are fully informed of the content of the contract, have a firm understanding of what they are entering into, and have agreed to enter into the contract knowing what they are signing for”. That is my understanding of a contract. Of course, that is never the utopian manner of contracts. So, if you have not been fully informed, i.e. have not been given “informed consent”, you are unsure of what you are signing due to lack of understanding, or concerns that your privacy may have been or will be breached, then, you should not be coerced into signing, under threat of being suspended or cut off your benefit. To me, if this occurred in everyday life, there would a case of intimidation, emotional blackmail, and harassment. Surely any lawyer worth his/her silk would have a case based on those elements. If the government is turning a “blind eye”, allowing these tactics to become everyday practice, then all I can say is,
    they obviously care more about the million dollar contracts they have just given out over five years, then the plight of individual unemployed people who lack the knowledge and the know how in understanding the tactics of power hungry and money hungry Job Network Providers. Secondly, if they are aware, they may not wish to have the proverbial “egg on their face”, with another Federal Election on the horizon.

  2. I have just been on the phone with the Ministers office. To ask if a potential employer who has offered to be my work for the dole, to give me experience and market me to other professionals who may be in need of my skills, can be classed as an approved activity. I am 51, work casually as a Medical Receptionist, and have been asked if I would like to do some admin work for an allied health professional, purely voluntary mind you, and Job Active, the dept and the minsters office tell me I am not allowed as it is classed as “slave labour”..UUUMMMMMM WHAT?????????????.. and work for the dole ISNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!…….. Instead I have to go assist in a retail charity store, where I will be dusting all day…… I have over 30 years experience in Retail, Admin, Customer Service etc etc… How is this going to help me??????????
    This govt has the lost the plot and do not know anything employment, employers or businesses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am in shock!!!!!!!!!!

    1. I notice that you say you have casual employment as a receptionist so I assume that you do have some income from employment. Depending on the amount of this income it may be unlawful to have a term in your Job Plan that requires you to take part in work for the dole. To be precise, if your rate of Newstart allowance is reduced by any amount due to income from employment, then according to Subsection 607B (1)(a) Of the Social Security Act 1991 your Job Plan cannot contain a compulsory WFD term. However how you go about persuading your Employment Service Provider of this can be tricky. It happened to me in fact and the ESP would not believe me. However in this case I refused to sign the agreement, was reported to Centerlink and won on appeal. I also reported my ESP to the Ombudsman after I received a favorable decision form Centerlink which resulted in a full and comprehensive government audit of the ESP. The up side is that after this the ESP changed there behavior toward me for the better. However please don’t treat this as legal advice, but it may be worth checking it out yourself. The section of law mentioned above is a little ambiguous in that it refers to ‘payment rate calculator B’, but it is this that is used to calculate your allowance after you declare income from employment.

      Cheers, Paul

  3. I find your story concerning the behavior of your employment service provider outrageous. I myself have not had such problems with my ESP although, on rare occasions where they have tried to insert ‘dodgy’ terms into my ‘plan’ I have not signed it and in fact invite them to pass it onto Centerlink (or report me in other words). Centerlink have a lot more at stake via the review process and will often not support the ESP if the terms of an agreement are suspect. Also on a number of occasions the ESP has backed down preferring no to report me to Centerlink.
    Moreover, if your concerns can be expressed in terms of your ‘capacity’ to comply with your Employment Pathway Plan (job plan) then you may have grounds under Subsection 606(6) of the Social Security Act 1991 to actually attach your concerns in writing to your agreement prior to signing. I have actually done this and it seems that the ESP’s have to accept it, although they might not like it; I simply insist on taking the agreement home for due consideration prior to signing and that’s how I post it back to them. So far they have not complained, and if there is any dispute down the track at least I have had my say and it is physically attached to the agreement as an addendum. However I am not sure how you would express your refusal to do something in terms of your incapacity to do it.
    It would seem to me that you are right to be concerned about privacy in an ITC context, and therefore should have the right to decline entering your personal information. It is also likely that you may have to rely on the appeal mechanism (or at least the threat of it) via Centerlink, SSAT and even the AAT to achieve satisfaction, and that usually carries some risk. I think your best bet if you want to back your case, it to refuse to enter your personal data so long as such data entry is not explicitly stated as a term in your agreement, if I recall your agreement says that you only agree to partake in group activities but those activities might not be actually specified in the agreement, this ambiguity may aid you as you appeal your case in the event that your ESP reports to Centerlink that you have failed to comply with a term in your EPP. Please to not treat this as legal advice and I wish you all the best.
    P.S. I have checked the ESQ website and the site displayed a notice that they were no longer a part of Job Services Australia. I hope I am right.
    Cheers,
    Paul Hunt

  4. Job Services Australia providers offer a feedback process which is fair and they will try to resolve any concerns. If you are unable to speak to your provider, or if you are still not happy, you can call the department s National Customer Service Line on 1800 805 260.

  5. Martin Seligman’s disgusting torture of dogs was certainly an inspiration for the reverse engineering of “learned helplessness” in the CIA’s torture program. Given the punitive aspect of ESP’s for-profit management of unemployed workers, I wonder if the techniques are not once again being employed counter-productively.

    I too have been forced into participating in dubious questionnaires, obliging to me to choose A or B. A was was making me state that my family would support me, while B was saying I would “work on that” My last remaining family member (mother) was just about to die, and there was no option C to provide this information… I got understandably upset… The irritated case manager filled in the rest of the questionnaire on my behalf. I have no idea what he replied.

    I’m guessing that few case managers would have the slightest idea who Martin Seligman is, or the ‘school’ of psychology that drives the system they operate under, so here’s a bit more information: http://www.dcdave.com/article5/141218.htm

    It is outrageous that unemployed workers should be duped into taking personality tests. The aim is obviously to medicalise their situation, in utter disregard for the fact that there are 11 people competing in Australia for each available job.

  6. When I was doing WFTD and I was sick for one day and therefore could not attend my WFTD, my Jobactive provider said I needed to show them a doctors certificate. I went to my doctors, got the doctors certificate which said I was sick and unable to work. When I sent this in to the Jobactive provider, at 4:00 p.m they responded and said a doctors certificate was not good enough and that I would have to provide them with a centrelink medical certificate. I had to drag myself out of my sick bed, back to the doctors for another appointment to get a Centrelink Medical Certificate to give to my Jobactive provider.
    I was very concerned as the Centrelink Medical Certificate includes a section where the Doctor must fill in exactly what the medical condition is. I believed that the Jobactive provider should not have been privy to my private medical information, however when you are being threatened with being breached if you do not supply this form, it is difficult to refuse.
    In retrospect, and if I had been well when making the decision, I should have refused and then appealed the breach with Centrelink.

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