--- title: "Chennai transcribers heard audio from 93 Australian court cases; no action follows" summary: "What Australia’s privacy regulator found on 4 November: how court audio reached a Chennai firm, why it saw a possible security breach but not a cross-border one, and why it closed the file." url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/australia-court-audio-chennai-subcontractor format: Note desk: "Data & privacy" region: Global published: 2026-11-05 facts_checked: 2026-11-05 author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal) tags: ["OAIC","Australia","VIQ Solutions","e24 Technologies","Chennai","court transcription","Federal Court of Australia","Federal Circuit and Family Court","Privacy Act 1988","APP 11","APP 8","offshoring","subcontractors","access control","liquidation","DPDP Act","section 17(1)(d)"] cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/australia-court-audio-chennai-subcontractor.png --- # Chennai transcribers heard audio from 93 Australian court cases; no action follows *What Australia’s privacy regulator found on 4 November: how court audio reached a Chennai firm, why it saw a possible security breach but not a cross-border one, and why it closed the file.* Note · Data & privacy · By TechBag · Published 2026-11-05 · Facts checked 2026-11-05 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/australia-court-audio-chennai-subcontractor Three employees of e24 Technologies, a company in Chennai, transcribed audio snippets from 93 matters in Australia’s federal courts between September 2025 and 6 February 2026, after they were added in error to a platform run by VIQ Solutions, the courts’ transcription contractor. Australia’s Information Commissioner said on 4 November that there is “a reasonable basis for concern that the incident may have involved a breach of APP 11”, the rule that personal information be kept secure, but will take no further action, because VIQ “is now in liquidation and has ceased its Australian operations”.[1][2] ## How court audio reached Chennai VIQ Solutions Pty Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of Canada’s VIQ Solutions Inc, recorded and transcribed hearings for the Federal Court and the Federal Circuit and Family Court under a Commonwealth contract. The audio sat on servers in Australia. Its NetScribe platform cut each hearing into non-continuous snippets, so a transcriber hears pieces of many cases, and could not keep a copy. The Canadian parent had a contract with e24 for “global transcription services” and “inadvertently added” e24 staff to the Australian work pools. Five e24 employees in India had access until it was revoked on 11 February; three used it.[2] **Figure: The audio never left Australia's servers; a parent company's error let Chennai transcribers in** *How Australian federal court audio reached e24's transcribers in Chennai, September 2025 to February 2026* 1. 01The federal courtsTheir contract bars VIQ from allowing access to personal information “from a location outside Australia” without permission. 2. 02VIQ (Australia)Stores the audio in Australia and cuts it into snippets on its NetScribe platform. No downloads. 3. 03VIQ's Canadian parentContracts e24 for global transcription, and adds five e24 staff to the Australian work pools by mistake. 4. 04e24, ChennaiThree staff transcribe snippets from 93 matters; last access 6 February 2026. Source: OAIC, report on VIQ Solutions Pty Ltd and Commonwealth agency contracting · as of 4 November 2026 · e24 transcribers in New Zealand also accessed matters; the OAIC's report covers those in India VIQ told the regulator the snippets were 15 minutes long. On 3 November an independent review commissioned by the Federal Circuit and Family Court found they were in 5-minute increments. Two of the 93 matters were ceremonial sittings; in the rest, the OAIC says, it is likely that many snippets held personal information, depending on “whose voice is recorded and what is said”. Media reports had alleged that “large quantities of sensitive court documents were improperly disclosed to a foreign entity”; the OAIC found the incident “smaller in scale and more confined”.[2] ## A possible security breach, not a cross-border one, and no one left to pursue Australian Privacy Principle 8 makes a company take reasonable steps before it discloses personal information to someone overseas. The OAIC found no disclosure: VIQ did not engage e24, and the audio “remained on VIQ’s servers in Australia and could not be downloaded”. It treated the case as unauthorised access, a question for APP 11, and called the root cause “an access-control error, rather than an ongoing practice.” The courts themselves are outside the Privacy Act for their judicial work, so the notifiable-breach scheme did not apply to them.[2] ReportedWhy the file closed VIQ went into voluntary administration on 16 March 2026, stopped operating in July and resolved to wind up on 5 August. Given that, the courts’ own response and the smaller scale, the OAIC decided further action “would not be an appropriate use of the OAIC’s resources.” It made no concluded findings and can still investigate. VIQ held 39 Commonwealth contracts with 13 agencies from 2019, one of them worth A$15.9m.[2] What Indian law asks of a Chennai firm handling foreign data Little. Section 17(1)(d) of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 switches off most of the Act where personal data of people “not within the territory of India is processed pursuant to any contract entered into with any person outside the territory of India by any person based in India”. Two duties survive: responsibility for compliance (section 8(1)) and “reasonable security safeguards to prevent personal data breach” (section 8(5)).[3] The Rules that set out those safeguards apply from 13 May 2027.[4] In this case what followed the audio to Chennai was a contract: the Canadian parent’s agreement required e24 to comply with Canadian privacy law.[2] The [IT & ITES obligations guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/industries/it-ites/obligations) sets out what else an Indian services firm working on foreign data owes. How we did this Figures as of 5 November 2026, 7pm IST All facts about the incident are from the OAIC’s report and release of 4 November, which rest on VIQ’s access logs and information from the parent company and the federal courts. The OAIC did not name the e24 staff or the matters. The report says nothing about how the transcribers worked beyond the platform, so we say nothing either. The DPDP Act is quoted from its Gazette text. Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece. Sources 1. [OAIC, OAIC closes preliminary inquiries into VIQ Solutions (media release)](https://www.oaic.gov.au/news/media-centre/oaic-closes-preliminary-inquiries-into-viq-solutions) — 4 November 2026 2. [OAIC, VIQ Solutions Pty Ltd and Commonwealth agency contracting (report of preliminary inquiries)](https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-assessments-and-decisions/privacy-decisions/Investigation-inquiry-reports/viq-solutions-pty-ltd-and-commonwealth-agency-contracting) — 4 November 2026 3. [The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (No. 22 of 2023), Gazette of India, sections 8 and 17](https://www.trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-09/DPDT_11082024.pdf) — 11 August 2023 4. [DPDP Rules, 2025 (G.S.R. 846(E)), commencement timeline: Rules 3 and 5 to 16 from 13 May 2027](https://legismith.com/dpdp-rules-2025-timeline/) — 13 November 2025 **Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view. Go deeper on TechBag - [IT & ITES obligations](https://www.thetechbag.com/industries/it-ites/obligations) — what an Indian services firm working on foreign clients' data owes, including section 17(1)(d) - [Data security & privacy guides](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/data-security-privacy) — the access, DLP and encryption controls that decide who can open a file