If this is what this country is to become a Nazi/Stalinist nation what the hell were we fighting for ?,especially on the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of world war 1
Both major parties are disgrace and have no vision except for one bad policy being more acceptable than another bad policy.
Tony Abbotts metadata retention policy
Written by PhonyTonyAbbott on August 7, 2014
Tony Abbott, the man who repeated promised "no surprises" has delivered all Australians another surprise.
During a doorstop interview on August 5, 2014, Tony Abbott announced a new range of "counter-terrorism" measures for a "safer Australia".
One of the measures to be introduced will be new legislation that relates to the "retention of metadata".
Obviously with the usual range of safeguards and warrants but that will include discussions with the telecommunications providers about the retention of metadata.
George Brandis went on to explain:
Finally, as the Prime Minister indicated, I have also been asked to develop – in consultation with relevant stakeholders, in particular, in the telecommunications sector – a system of mandatory data retention. That legislation has been approved in principle and is in development from today and will be introduced into Parliament later in the year.
Now, it's important to note that this isn't the first time that "metadata" retention has been raised.
In 2012, the then Gillard Labor Government wanted to introduce mandatory two year "data retention" while Nicola Roxon was the Attorney General.
The policy was eventually scrapped in June 2013 by Nicola Roxon's replacement, Mark Dreyfus.
On the face of it, the current Abbott Government policy sounds very much like Labor's scrapped version.
So, before I start pointing out the problems with Tony Abbott's "brand new" recycled "metadata" retention policy, let's take a look at what is being proposed so that we can all be a little clearer. What is the Government proposing?
The Abbott Government is proposing legislation requiring telecommunications companies to retain "metadata" for a mandatory period of two years. Aren't telecommunication companies already doing this?
Yes and no.
Telecommunications providers can and do use "metadata" for limited uses, such as customer billing.
However, there is no requirement for them to retain this information, nor are there any requirements as to the specifics of the information that they capture/use.
This information, however, can already be accessed by Local Councils, certain organisations as well as Law Enforcement. What is "metadata"?
Based on the Attorney General's office definition of "metadata", which you can read here, "Metadata is a term often used to mean telecommunications data." What is the definition of "telecommunications data"?
The short version is that "Telecommunications data refers to information or documents that are not the content of a communication."
There are also two different categories of "telecommunications data".
Information that allows a communication to occur
Information about the parties to the communications
The first category includes information such as:
Phone numbers (called or texted)
VOIP numbers
IP addresses
Email addresses
The time and date that the communication took place
The duration that the communication took place
General location (ie cell towers)
The second category includes information such as:
Name of the customer
Address of the customer
Postal address of the customer (if different)
Billing address of the customer (if different)
Other contact details (mobile number, email address, landline number etc)
Same information on the recipient (if known)
What isn't being collected?
If you believe the Abbott Government, the actual "content" of communications isn't being collected.
So, things like:
The content of emails or phone calls
The content of text messages
Email subject lines
Chat discussions
The name of websites visited
The content of posts made on social media (tweets, Facebook posts etc)
Websites a person visits
What "can" be collected?
An easier question is "what can't be collected" by those who want it.
I highly recommend visiting this web page and clicking on the individual "services" that you might use during a normal day.
You will more than likely be surprised at what you find.
In general (and non-legal terms), the actual content of our communications shouldn't be intercepted by Government or Law Enforcement agencies without a warrant of some kind.
Whether that actually happens or not, well, who knows. So, what are the problems with "metadata retention"?
Well, if you believe Tony Abbott (and I don't), we have nothing to worry about.
This is what he had to say on the Nine Network's Today:
Well, let's be clear about what this so called metadata is.
It's not the content of the letter, it's what's on the envelope if I might use a metaphor that I think most Australians would understand.
It's not what you're doing on the internet, it's the sites you're visiting, it's not the content, it's just where you've been so to speak, and if you look at the...what's on the front of an envelope, it's the person you've sent it to, it's the person sending it, it's the date and it's the place that it's posted from.
This is information which is as I understand it, is typically already kept by the Internet providers and there's some risk that as time goes by and as technology changes that this information will no longer be kept.
We're talking to the Internet providers to ensure that this so called metadata is kept because it is a very, very important weapon in the fight against terror.
All of the expert advice which the Government gets, all of the expert advice which the Opposition gets, says that this is an absolutely vital weapon in the fight against terror.
It's an absolutely vital weapon against crime fighting more generally.
Tony Abbott's response should concern all of us.
Why?
His response has implied - twice - that peoples web browsing history may be included in the "metadata" retention.
The first was when he made reference to "the sites you're visiting" and then a second time with "it's just where you've been so to speak".
And then, during an interview with Michael Brissendon on ABC AM later that morning, Tony Abbott was asked:
Is it going to include our internet search histories?
Tony Abbott responded:
Well my understanding is that if it’s generated by you, it’s content and that won’t be kept. If it’s generated by the service providers, that’s metadata and that will be kept.
If you're feeling a little unsure about whether peoples web history will be included, join the club.
With seemingly conflicting responses, it may just be that Tony Abbott doesn't even understand his own policy.
Or perhaps, there is a secret agenda to store peoples browsing history?
Time will tell.
Certainly, in July, iiNet's Steve Dalby told a Senate Committee that "the Attorney-General's department has asked for much more than what he says the government refers to as "just metadata"".
There was another question that should concern us.
Michael Brissendon:
On the cost of data retention, who’s going to pay for that because iiNet for instance is saying it could cost their customers an extra $5 to $10 a month?
Tony Abbott:
Well, I don’t know why they would be saying that because this is information which is already kept. It’s information which is currently kept, it’s information which is currently done, it’s embedded in the current price – it’s already factored in to current pricing structures.
Tony Abbott clearly has no concept of what is involved in retaining two years of "metadata" for tens of thousands of customers, nor even hundreds of thousands of customers for both mobile and internet related services.
Telecommunications providers currently don't have to retain "metadata" for two years - they can retain what they want, when they want, and for as long as they want.
There is no requirement for them to retain data for any longer than is necessary, so they have never had to factor in the cost of retaining two years of internet or mobile "metadata" for tens or hundreds of thousands of customers.
Tony Abbott has completely ignored the fact that Telecommunications providers would need to spend money on implementing the new "metadata" retention policy.
Telecommunications companies have indicated that this policy could cost the industry between $500 and $600 million to implement depending on how the Government defines "metadata".
In April of this year, iiNet revealed that they alone would need to spend "around $60 million on a large data centre holding up to 20,000 terabytes of data" - costs that they would need to pass on to their customers.
What is clear, is that Tony Abbott and his Government are simply not listening to the Telecommunications providers that would be forced to implement this policy.
And that was one of Tony Abbott's main criticisms of the former Labor Federal Government.
To quote Tony Abbott: "this is a Government which isn’t listening". UPDATE 1:
There appears to be more confusion from within Coalition ranks at to "metadata" will be retained. The Australian has reported that during a Sky News Interview, George Brandis was asked a question about "web histories", and he responded:
What you’re viewing on the internet is not what we’re interested in. What the security agencies want to know, to be retained, is the electronic address of the website.
It tells you the address of the website. When you visit a website, people browse from one thing to the next and that browsing history won’t be retained and there won’t be any capacity to access that.
At a guess, it sounds as though Brandis is suggesting that each website that you visit will be logged - just not what you do on that particular website.
For example, if you were to visit this website, that would be retained within the "metadata".
If you clicked on a link to read another article within this website, that would not be retained.
However, if you clicked on a link that opened to another website, that would also be retained as "metadata".
In short, every single website you visit on the Internet will be retained as "metadata" for a period of two years from the moment you visit it.
And every single time you visit that website, it will be another two years before it is removed. UPDATE 2: The Australian also indicates that Malcolm Turnbull wasn't consulted over the "metadata" retention, and that the decision came from both Tony Abbott and George Brandis without any other consultation.
You would think that the Minister for Communications would have been one of the first people to have been consulted, but apparently this is not what happens in the Tony Abbott Government.
It seems that Malcolm Turnbull found out about it by reading the front page of Sydney's The Daily Telegraph.
So, what would Malcolm Turnbull have thought about it all?
This is what Malcolm Turnbull had to say in 2012 about the then Gillard Government's proposed policy:
How can we have a right to be digitally forgotten without impinging on others’ right of free speech?
This issue has been brought into sharp focus by the Attorney-General’s vague but at face value far-reaching plan to expand data interception, mandatory data retention, and government access to private digital information.
And the most striking proposed expansion of government power over private data is the least clearly explained. These are amendments which provide for what is described as: “tailored data retention periods for up to 2 years for parts of a data set, with specific timeframes taking into account agency priorities, and privacy and cost impacts.”
Internet companies will apparently be required to store parts of everyone’s data, although there is no clarity as to which material will be kept or why.
In fact there is little clarity; period. A recent letter from Nicola Roxon to the Herald-Sun bemoaning its coverage of the data retention issue provided more information about this measure than a 61-page discussion paper released by her department.
While the purported intent is that only metadata – data about data – will be available to law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies, there is no explanation of how metadata will be distinguished from data (the two are often commingled, as in the ‘subject’ line of emails), why both would not be readily available once a message has been handed over and decrypted, and indeed how readily in an IP world it is possible to keep a record of the time, date, size, sender, receiver and possibly subject of an email without also retaining the contents.
Nor has there been an explanation of what costs and benefits have been estimated for this sweeping and intrusive new power, how these were arrived at, what (if any) cost was ascribed to its chilling effect on free speech, and whether any gains in national security or law enforcement asserted as justification for the changes will be monitored and verified should they be enacted.
ASIO’s submission to the parliamentary inquiry considering the discussion paper argues that the type of information it seeks is not very different from what it has hitherto been able to obtain from telcos who retain details of telephone calls (but not the content) for the purpose of billing. In an IP world where charging is done on the basis of total bandwidth utilization, ASIO argues these details are not required by the telcos or web companies and so they can be deleted.
The German Federal Constitutional Court has recently struck down a similar data retention law noting that “meta-data” may be used to draw conclusions about not simply the content of the messages, but the social and political affiliations, personal preferences, inclinations and weaknesses of the individual concerned.
Leaving aside the central issue of the right to privacy, there are formidable practical objections. The carriers, including Telstra, have argued that the cost of complying with a new data retention regime would be very considerable with the consequence of higher charges for their customers.
...
And finally – why do we imagine that the criminals of the greatest concern to our security agencies will not be able to use any of numerous available means to anonymise their communications or indeed choose new services that are not captured by legislated data retention rules?
Without wanting to pre-empt the conclusions of the Parliamentary Committee, I must record my very grave misgivings about the proposal. It seems to be heading in precisely the wrong direction. Surely as we reflect on the consequences of the digital shift from a default of forgetting to one of perpetual memory we should be seeking to restore as far as possible the individual’s right not simply to their privacy but to having the right to delete that which they have created in the same way as can be done in the analogue world.
This is perhaps Malcolm Turnbull's most damning indictment of mandatory "metadata" retention:
Now this data retention proposal is only the latest effort by the Gillard Government to restrain freedom of speech www.phonytonyabbott.com
