SA’s privacy watchdog has found it is “probable” the Marshall government did not facilitate unauthorised collection of personal data. 

The state's Privacy Committee has reviewed links posted across official sites including the Department of the Premier and Cabinet and COVID-19 pages, which were tied to stateliberalleader.nationbuilder.com; a Liberal Party data and campaigning tool.

The party uses the tool to profile voters and “tag” their interest in certain issues.

Both NationBuilder and SA Premier Steven Marshall have denied that any data was collected.

The state's Privacy Committee has now looked at whether the government breached its Information Privacy Principles.

“NationBuilder and agencies indicated that they have not collected any personal information from the website redirections,” the committee's presiding member, Simon Froude, wrote in a report this week.

“It is therefore probable that SA government agencies have not facilitated unauthorised collection.”

Mr Froude said it “did not appear” that the privacy principles had been breached.

“The committee noted that the media coverage generated through this matter and the inquiry by the committee will have had a positive outcome of raising awareness amongst agencies of the risk to the privacy of personal information by such action,” he said.

Mr Marshall had previously claimed that the links were inadvertently copied onto official websites from press releases created in the NationBuilder system.

The report said the state ombudsman “may wish to enquire further into the use of NationBuilder within a government agency and the practice of agencies cutting and pasting URL links”.

Ombudsman Wayne Lines says he is “considering the report and determining whether … to undertake further enquiries”. 

The Privacy Committee features a mixture of public servants and non-government members.

Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas claims the state government “handpicked” the Privacy Committee to review itself.

“I think it's a bit cheeky for the state government to say we've reviewed ourselves, and we've told ourselves that we've done a good job,” he said.

“What we need here is what we've always argued for, which is a genuinely independent review.”