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Victoria’s government-owned timber company unlawfully spied on environmental activists who protested native logging in state forests, the privacy watchdog has found.
VicForests hired a private investigator to conduct covert surveillance of two environmentalists and a university professor to gain information to discredit them, the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner said in a report released on Thursday.
VicForests unlawfully surveilled environmental activists protesting state logging roughly a decade ago.Credit: Jessica Shapiro
The report said the investigator took videos and photos of one environmentalist going about her daily activities around 2010. He ultimately did not monitor the other two activists.
Commissioner Sven Bluemmel said the privacy act breaches were “serious and flagrant”.
“Whilst the surveillance took place almost a decade ago, the seriousness of the allegations led my office to conduct the investigation upon becoming aware of them,” he said.
“No one in the community should be subjected to this incursion on their personal privacy.”
VicForests does not accept the findings of the investigation, the report notes. VicForests was contacted for comment.
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