21 C
Byron Shire
March 27, 2024

Privacy ends October 13, 2015

Latest News

Splendour 2024 cancelled

It's official, Splendour in the Grass 2024 has been cancelled.

Other News

Mullum pods

They look so uninviting and dismal. It would not cost a lot to change the name to ‘tiny homes’...

Laid-back but lively

Ooz is an acoustic roots reggae artist with a large, eclectic repertoire of crowd favourites. His unique, laid-back but lively style creates a relaxed atmosphere and his song choices have you remembering many of those forgotten classics.

‘Smooth stroking’ Rainbow Dragons earn trophies

Rainbow Dragons (Lennox Head Ballina) won three trophies and had a fantastic weekend of fun, fitness and friendship at Grafton Dragon Boat Club’s regatta earlier in March.

Seize the Decade report outlines benefits of renewables

The Climate Council says many more Australian families can directly benefit from rooftop solar and batteries under a new plan that spells out how we can electrify the nation and cut climate pollution this decade.

Democracy on the ropes?

The ancient idea of democracy is under threat around the world. Today, there are only 63 democracies compared to 74 autocracies, and many of these democracies are highly problematic.

Lismore Labor MP called out over native forest logging

More than five hundred people marched in the rain through Lismore to the local state member’s office in protest against government sanctioned native forest logging on Sunday.

By Phillip Frazer

The Abbott government’s new law on collecting the country’s ‘metadata’ from all of our communications devices will go into effect next month.

The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015 requires that every one of the 400 Australian telcos and ISPs keep a record – not a recording – of every phone call, text, email, and download you make. For phone calls, this ‘metadata’ includes the number called, duration of the call, and the rough location you called or texted from.

This metadata must be stored for two years and will be accessible to more than 20 Australian government agencies, from ASIO through every federal and state police force and corruption commission, and to any other agency that attorney-general George Brandis nominates.

For phone calls, this includes VOIP and 800 numbers, even missed calls.

No warrants, $2 million fines 

Email data is supposedly limited to whom you emailed, when, and the size of each attachment. Email has one loophole – that data will only be tracked and kept if you’re using an Australian provider – Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail are exempt – allegedly, and for now.

Our intelligence and police agents can access all this on demand, any time without a warrant and telcos and ISPs face fines up to $2 million for failure to cough up.

Any search of your data must be a state secret forever, and anyone who tells you you’ve been searched faces jail.

There is no requirement that ISPs or phone companies keep the IP addresses of websites you visit, but in Quentin Dempster’s excellent Sydney Morning Herald article last Saturday, Fairfax tech editor Ben Grubb says there’ll probably be a record of every website you look at, because it’s too hard to separate that one vital piece from the mandated metadata.

Additionally the internet corporations will be allowed to keep those records of our web-browsing.

As Dempster points out, all these track-and-keep rules zoomed through parliament, herded by Attorney-General Brandis with token amendments from Labor. The only serious resistance was from the Greens and independents.

Our new laws go further than even the US laws, which allow this secret spying on citizens only when it’s specifically about preventing acts of terrorism. Israel, where deadly conflict is always imminent, has no metadata retention laws, because their experts reckon it wouldn’t do much to stop violent acts.

Similar to China

Only China has a surveillance regimen as broad as the one passed by our parliament.

All this data trawling is already happening here, mostly to nail corruption and criminality. In 2013–14, Dempster reports 330,000 requests were made by Australian law enforcement agencies. To my knowledge, none was refused.

Meanwhile, in the US, two separate government agencies have recently announced that all this metadata madness has not stopped a single terrorist attack.

Metadata might save lives if the local cops use it to track an identified abuser who’s messaging threats of violence to the kid, but it’s unlikely to catch those very occasional lone gunmen waving a home-made terror flag just when they’re about to open fire.

No costs presented by federal govt

It’s obvious to most of the world that this is not worth sacrificing our privacy for – and it’s not worth the hundreds of millions of dollars it will cost.

In any event, no estimates of the costs have been presented by our ruling authoritarians.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, folks. No-one will be allowed to read your emails in real time or listen to your phone calls, so the law says, unless they get a warrant… but telling a court there are certain patterns in your metadata could easily result in the issuance of such a warrant – and you won’t know because all those warrants are, and will remain, top secret.

Every provider must be willing and able to hand over your data when shown a warrant, but many will wind up contracting out these new obligations to new, specialist companies.

These companies are being formed as you read this.

In other words, corporates will get your data too. To allay rampant paranoia, the government has a new ‘communications access coordinator’, who will approve these consultants.

When Demster tried to question Brandis’s inaugural access coordinator, she told him she was, ‘not authorised to speak to Fairfax Media.’


Support The Echo

Keeping the community together and the community voice loud and clear is what The Echo is about. More than ever we need your help to keep this voice alive and thriving in the community.

Like all businesses we are struggling to keep food on the table of all our local and hard working journalists, artists, sales, delivery and drudges who keep the news coming out to you both in the newspaper and online. If you can spare a few dollars a week – or maybe more – we would appreciate all the support you are able to give to keep the voice of independent, local journalism alive.

1 COMMENT

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

We just love him!

If you’re over 50 you might not be a fan of Tom Jones, but you can bet your mum is. If you’re under 40 you might not even know who he is, but your grandmother probably wet her pants at the mere mention of his name.

Peter Garrett gives Bluesfest the nod

If I say the words ‘US Forces give the nod’, I can pretty much guarantee that you will hear the unmistakable voice of Peter Garrett ringing in your ears. Your head may even start to bob up and down a bit. 

Save Wallum finalist in NSW 2024 environment awards

The Save Wallum campaign has been named as a finalist in the Nature Conservation Council of NSW Environment Awards 2024. The award ceremony will be held in Sydney tonight, and Save Wallum spokesperson and ecologist James Barrie will be attending with Tegan Kitt, another founding member of the group.

New report highlights gaps in rural and remote health

The second annual Royal Flying Doctor Service ‘Best for the Bush, Rural and remote Health Base Line’ report has just been released. Presenting the latest data on the health of rural and remote Australians and evidence on service gaps, it identifies issues in urgent need of attention from service providers, funders, partners and policy makers.