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LEGAL, INTERNATIONAL AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS
CASA Ref: F25/10673
29 April 2025
Ben Fairless
By email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 1982
I refer to your request under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (the Act), received on
23 April 2025, seeking access to:
1.
Policies, procedures, or internal guidelines concerning requests to third-party services for the
removal or suppression of aircraft tracking data;
2.
Correspondence between your agency and third-party flight tracking platforms relating to the
suppression, removal, or anonymisation of aircraft data;
3.
Internal discussions, briefings, or records outlining the rationale or decisions around seeking to
suppress aircraft data from public tracking platforms;
4.
Statistics, reports, or summaries indicating the volume and nature of requests made to third-
party platforms over the past five years;
5.
Any agreements, memoranda of understanding, or formal arrangements between your agency
and third-party flight tracking platforms relating to data suppression or visibility restrictions.
I am the decision maker for your request and am authorised to make decisions under the Act.
Material taken into account
In reaching my decision I have had regard to the fol owing:
• the terms of your request
• searches undertaken by CASA
• the Act
• the FOI Guidelines issued by the Information Commissioner under section 93A of the Act
(the Guidelines).
Decision
I have decided to refuse access to your request under section 24A of the Act, as no documents can
be located or the documents do not exist.
Section 24A of the Act provides that, after al reasonable steps have been taken to find the
documents, access to documents may be refused if the documents do not exist or cannot be found.
Searches were undertaken on our Records Management System (RMS) to identify any documents
that fal within the scope of your above request. RMS is CASA’s central records management system
where al electronic records are located. In conducting searches on RMS, no documents were
located in relation to your request. For this reason, I am satisfied that the documents do not exist.
Civil Aviation Safety Authority
GPO Box 2005 Canberra ACT 2601 | Telephone: 131 757
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Therefore, I refuse access to the documents under section 24A of the Act.
Internal review
You can apply for an internal review of my decision under section 54 of the Act. Your application
must be made in writing within 30 days of receiving this letter.
The application does not need to be in any particular form but should preferably explain why you
consider my decision should be reviewed.
The application should be addressed as fol ows:
Freedom of Information
Legal, International and Regulatory Affairs Division
Civil Aviation Safety Authority
GPO Box 2005
Canberra ACT 2601
Review by the Australian Information Commissioner
Alternatively, under section 54L of the Act, you may apply to the OAIC to review my decision. To
do this, you must lodge your application in writing within 60 days of the date of this letter in one of
the fol owing ways:
online: https://forms.business.gov.au/smartforms/servlet/SmartForm.html?formCode=ICR_10
email: xxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx
post: Director of FOI Dispute Resolution, OAIC, GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001
Yours sincerely,
Adam Anastasi
A/g Manager, Advisory
Legal, International and Regulatory Affairs Division
Email: xxxx.xxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx
Civil Aviation Safety Authority
GPO Box 2005 Canberra ACT 2601 | Telephone: 131 757
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