Introduction

Freedom for Faith (“FFF”, “we” or “us”) is a Christian legal think tank which exists to see religious freedom promoted and protected in Australia and beyond.

Purpose

This Privacy Policy summarises how we will deal with your personal information.

Commitment

We are committed to protecting your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. We choose to do this even though we are not legally bound to do so as a ‘small business’.

By visiting our website, using any of our services or otherwise providing us with your personal information (or authorising it to be provided to us by someone else), you agree to your personal information being handled as set out in this Privacy Policy.

Definitions

For the purposes of this policy –

Personal Information is information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.

Sensitive Information includes information about your health, your race or ethnic origin, political opinions and religious beliefs.

Personal Information

FFF only collects personal information that is necessary to undertake its activities. This includes but is not limited to information about –

• Members of our board and board of reference
• Lawyers, academics and other people who help us undertake our activities or who attend the events we run
• People who make donations to us or request us to send them information
• Other people with whom we come in contact.

FFF may collect a wide range of personal information such as name, phone number(s), residential and postal address, email address(es), bank account and/or credit card details. We only collect this information where it is reasonably necessary to undertake our activities.

Sensitive Information

Some personal information that we collect may also be sensitive information.

The most common form of sensitive information we collect is in relation to religious beliefs. For example we may seek information about your religious beliefs for the purpose of determining your suitability for election or appointment to a position in FFF.

Collection & Storage

FFF may collect your personal information in various ways, including via telephone, our website, in writing (including by email or other electronic means) and/or through online forms/surveys, whether hosted on a third party website or our own.

Sensitive Information

FFF will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent unless –

• we are otherwise allowed or required by law to collect that information, or
• the information relates to our activities and relates solely to members of FFF or to individuals with whom we have regular contact in connection with our activities.

If you provide us with sensitive information about yourself which is necessary to undertake our activities, we will treat this as collection of such information with your consent.

Third Parties

In most situations we collect your personal information directly from you. However, we may also collect information from third parties if it is impractical to collect it directly from you.

We may also seek to collect information about someone else from you. However, you must not provide us with personal information about another person unless you have consent from that person to do so, have told them that their personal information will be handled in accordance with this Privacy Policy and have told them where they can find a copy of this policy.

We may also collect your personal information from publicly available sources.

Unsolicited personal information

If we receive personal information about you that we have not requested (unsolicited personal information) we will generally, unless otherwise required or permitted by law, delete or destroy it as soon as practical after receiving it. If you provide us with unsolicited personal information about yourself we may retain this information if it is necessary to undertake our activites or to comply with our legal obligations, or we do so with your consent.

Collection of personal information required by law

In certain circumstances we may be required or permitted by law to collect certain personal information about you. For example, we may need to collect your name, residential address, country of residence, date of birth, and other types of personal information to comply with our legislative obligations.

Purpose of collecting your Personal Information and its use by FFF

FFF only collects, holds and uses personal information for the purposes for which it was provided, related purposes that we consider to be within your reasonable expectations or as permitted or required by law. These purposes include –

• promoting and running conferences and other events;
• contacting you regarding matters relating to religious freedom in which you may have an interest;
• seeking your views to assist in shaping reports/submissions in relation to religious freedom; s processing authorised payments to and from you;
• providing you with services that have been requested; and
• any other uses identified at the time of collecting your personal information.

Disclosure

We may disclose your information to other entities identified at the time of collecting your personal information or to which you subsequently request or expressly consent to us providing your personal information.

This means we will not disclose your personal information to another entity for the purposes of that entity soliciting donations from you without your express consent.

SDS may disclose your personal information to third party service providers, agents or contractors from time to time to help us to provide our services to you. If we do this, we generally require those parties to protect your personal information in the same way we do.

We may also disclose your information to government bodies, regulators, law enforcement agencies and any other parties where authorised or required by law.

Disclosure to overseas recipients

In general FFF does not disclose your personal information to any overseas recipients, although there may be some specific exceptions to this, for example organising for a delegation to attend a conference overseas. On such occasions we will seek your consent to disclose your personal information and will outline to you who it will be disclosed to and how it will be used by them.

Storage and Security

We take reasonable steps to protect any personal information that we hold from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, alteration and disclosure. For example, we implement the following security measures –

• security procedures for access to our internal office areas;
• security procedures within our offices (including, locked cabinets and file rooms for personal information that is particularly sensitive);
• IT security procedures including password protection, firewalls, intrusion detection and site monitoring; and
• a requirement for all staff to maintain confidentiality except insofar as disclosure is reasonably necessary for the proper performance of employment duties.

Your personal information may be stored in a third-party data centre operated by Salesforce that is located overseas. We access this data through the internet. Salesforce’s systems are subject to a number of internationally recognised privacy and security audits (see http://trust.salesforce.com).

Access

You may access personal information we hold about you, subject to certain legal restrictions or exemptions. Where such restrictions or exemptions exist we will advise you of those reasons at the time of your request.

If you wish to access the personal information we hold about you or request that it be corrected or updated, you should contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details below.

While we do not charge you for a request for accessing your personal information you should be aware that we may charge a reasonable fee (which will be notified to you once you make a request) for our time and expenses in the following circumstances –

• if an extended amount of time is required to collate and prepare material for you; and 
• if you wish to have your files photocopied for you.

Quality of Information and Correction

We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we hold about you is accurate, complete and up-to-date. However, we also rely on you to advise us of any changes to your personal information in a timely manner.

If there are any changes to your personal information or if you believe the personal information we hold about you is not accurate, complete, up-to-date or is misleading, you may be given access to update our records directly. Otherwise please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details below, so that we can update our records accordingly. In some cases we may refuse to make changes in the manner requested by you, and in such case will provide you with a written notice that explains the reasons for our refusal. In such circumstances, you may provide us with a statement in respect to the need for correction and ask us to associate the statement with the information in question.

Complaint Handling

If you wish to make a complaint about a breach of this Privacy Policy you can contact us using the contact details below.

You will need to provide us with sufficient details regarding your complaint together with any supporting evidence.

We will refer your complaint to our Privacy Officer who will investigate and determine the steps (if any) that we will undertake to resolve your complaint. We will contact you if we require any additional information from you and will notify you in writing of the outcome of the investigation within 30 days of the date your complaint is made or the date you provided us with any additional information.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

FFF may update this Privacy Policy from time to time so please review it periodically on our website at www.freedomforfaith.org.au for any changes.

Your continued use of our services (including online services), requesting our assistance or the provision of further personal information to us after this Privacy Policy has been revised, constitutes your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.

Contact us

Click here to download a pdf of our Privacy Policy. If you have a query relating to it, or wish to make a complaint, please contact us at info@freedomforfaith.org.au.