15. Paragraph 76B(2)(b) is intended to protect information under the control of the Commonwealth, and also to protect the privacy of persons to whom such information relates. The income tax laws require almost every person who earns an income in Australia to have a tax file number and to furnish returns with particulars, sometimes of a very personal and private nature. The information received by the ATO in this way is stored on computer. A tax file number, which is virtually confidential between the ATO and the taxpayer, provides the key to other detailed information about the taxpayer. For the efficient functioning of the ATO, it is no doubt essential for numerous officers to have access to much of the information on the computer including tax file numbers. The potential to retrieve such information and even to have it produced in a printed form is enormous. The officers who are granted access are entrusted with that capacity only for the legitimate purposes of their duties. The average tax payer would, I am sure, be outraged at the prospect of an officer of the ATO perusing details of the tax payer's personal affairs, which the taxpayer has disclosed under threat of penalty, other than for a proper purpose. The outrage may be all the greater if the officer were motivated by commercial or other "nefarious" purpose, but, in my view, that is not to the point. In my view, it was wrong for the Magistrate to have regard to the hypothesis that it was "routine" for an officer like the respondent, authorised to obtain access to information of a private kind on the computer, to use that authority at the officer's whim in order to obtain such information, not for the purposes of the office itself, but for amusement, edification or any other private purpose.