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Australian Gov't Tries To Force Telcos To Store User Metadata For 2 Years

Posted by timothy on from the authority-problem dept.

AlbanX writes The Australian Government has introduced a bill that would require telecommunications carriers and service providers to retain the non-content data of Australian citizens for two years so it can be accessed — without a warrant — by local law enforcement agencies. Despite tabling the draft legislation into parliament, the bill doesn't actually specify the types of data the Government wants retained. The proposal has received a huge amount of criticism from the telco industry, other members of parliament and privacy groups. (The Sydney Morning Herald has some audio of discussion about the law.)

58 comments

  1. So, in other words... by MitchDev · · Score: 1

    Australia is trying to return to its roots as one big Penal Colony, with the citizens as the inmates?

    1. Re:So, in other words... by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Well our leader was up before the Judge twice, once for groping a girl from behind and once for theft of a traffic sign, so he resembles a criminal exported from the UK in some ways.

    2. Re:So, in other words... by anchovy_chekov · · Score: 1

      Well our leader was up before the Judge twice, once for groping a girl from behind and once for theft of a traffic sign, so he resembles a criminal exported from the UK in some ways.

      More to the point, he *is* from the UK. He was born there, studied there and - though it's been quietly forgotten about - may not be entitled to hold office unless he has given up his dual citizenship.

    3. Re:So, in other words... by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Yes. Soon to be Sir Tony is does have some behaviours that remind us that when he says "unaustralian" he really means not English. Other things like his hypocritical attacks on Slipper and Hanson which were really for defecting from the party convince me that he's not fit to hold a position of responsibility.

  2. Crocodile Dundee by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    (Australian government looks at U.S.A. data retention laws)

    Australian government: You call that data retention laws?

    (Australian government pulls out their own data retention laws)

    Australian government: THAT'S data retention laws.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  3. Let's not call it 1984. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    1984 was 30 years ago. This is just plain fascism.

    1. Re:Let's not call it 1984. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      America 2001

  4. Yea no... by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've worked in the industry for almost 20yrs.
    It's not possible. Even just storing DHCP data to meet DMCA requests for a very small telco is gigabytes per day. Add their actual traffic to that? The cost of the storage space would make running an ISP totally unprofitable. Even if you did find a way to fund such a thing, how long do you think it would take a group like anonymous to launch on application that just pinged random IP's all day long? It would almost immediately crush the system.

    1. Re:Yea no... by dablow · · Score: 1

      Actual data would not fall under the definition of metadata. It would be actual data. And I believe at the moment, with the current hard drive storage tech available to enterprises and consumers, is impossible. For now. Stuff like IP address, URLs visited, emails sent and received from (not the entire email, just who you messaged and who messaged you), location data etc. can certainly be stored. Most logs will be in text which is highly compressible (I know from my systems gigs and gigs of logs generated daily compresses often to less than 100MB).

    2. Re:Yea no... by jimmetry · · Score: 0

      The government is hardly meta enough to even handle their own data. But they're sure good at dawn raids.

    3. Re:Yea no... by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Thats why a new net tax is needed to help with the costs.
      "Secret government briefing admits metadata law cost and warns of 'internet tax' campaign" (October 30, 2014) (video)
      http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...
      AFP will use data retention to fight piracy (Oct 30, 2014)
      http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...
      ""Generally they do this in real-time, so the two years of holding this data probably doesn't make a lot of difference. That process of resolving an IP address to an account name is relevant, and it happens all the time.""
      Government introduces data retention bill to Parliament (30 October, 2014 )
      https://www.computerworld.com....
      "source of communication, destination of communication, date, time and duration of communication, or of its connection to a relevant service, type of a
      communication, or a type of relevant service used in connection with a communication, location of equipment, or a line, used in connection with a communication"
      Thats not "web browsing" history :) Just most details surrounding the content :)

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    4. Re:Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've worked in the industry for almost 20yrs.
      It's not possible. Even just storing DHCP data to meet DMCA requests for a very small telco is gigabytes per day. Add their actual traffic to that? The cost of the storage space would make running an ISP totally unprofitable.

      Bad example, a couple of gigabytes per day is solved by investing in a 3TB disk.
      For an example you should choose something that isn't easily solved to show that even a subset is expensive and then hint at how much more the full solution would cost.

    5. Re:Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Metadata capture is already happening in some less scrupulous Australian ISPs. This metadata is licenced to market research companies and analysed in aggregate. It's also quite feasible to archive this.

      It wouldn't take much to turn this into an user-identifiable system -- RADIUS IDs are already used to match other sources of demographic data against browsing sessions.

      What would stall this though is total use of SSL/HTTPS and/or Tor. The taps in the ISP datacentres can then only see source and destination IP addresses, which really doesn't prove anything wrt. to actual content being viewed.

    6. Re:Yea no... by Charliemopps · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actual data would not fall under the definition of metadata. It would be actual data. And I believe at the moment, with the current hard drive storage tech available to enterprises and consumers, is impossible. For now.

      Stuff like IP address, URLs visited, emails sent and received from (not the entire email, just who you messaged and who messaged you), location data etc. can certainly be stored. Most logs will be in text which is highly compressible (I know from my systems gigs and gigs of logs generated daily compresses often to less than 100MB).

      Right. I do it for a living. Compressed, 10gigs per day, just for DHCP logs. At that's just so you can know which customer had which IP at a particular time. I started a project to automate some of that, but the data was so immense it would have required dedicated servers and such parse it all. You have to remember, the IP gets assigned to a piece of equipment that is not at the customers house. It may appear to you that the ips actually on your router, but it's not. The customers router then connects to that through a vast internal network. It's not nearly as simple as your home lan. It's not "Bobby had 192.168.1.102" It's "Device 42:64:AB:65:??:?? had IP 192.168.1.102 and that device was on rack 123254856 and that rack was in cabnet 35489461 and that cabinet was in remote 452268212, on feeder trunk XYZ, which connected to MUX 6542584 and then left on copper card 2456684 on pair 5451815 which was frogged to 65628 which led to Ped 254-agd-5684 and left on drop pair 51547 and that pair was assigned to Bobby."

      But you may be thinking "All that stuffs static though!" it's not. It gets changed all the time. There are lightening storms, animals chew wires, equipment dies. In any given small town techs swap out hundreds of pairs, equipment, etc... daily. In the current real world, all you need to keep track of is how things are hooked up and what's bad. "Pair 1234 is bad, don't use it" and "Customer 5245 has this route" done... but if you want to know what IP they had at 12:45:01 on friday the 26th, you also have to know all of that intermediary equipment info to make the link. So now, you don't just need to know their plant records currently, you need to know what they were historically for 2 years! It's orders of magnitude more expensive and complicated than the current system. We're talking like overhauling the entire telco infrastructure. Plant records is one of the most expensive IT costs a telco has. Could we redesign the entire network to work differently and eliminate this problem? Yes... but we're talking about a massive project that would involve throwing out all of our equipment and training and starting over.

      Now, cable companies are different. I can't really speak to them. They work more like an old Bus network and the COAX is like a big antenna everyone shares. So, theoretically, I would think that the IP gets assigned directly to your cable modem via mac address. You'd have to ask someone that works for a cable company though. There may be a lot of problems there as well, I wouldn't know.

    7. Re:Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Metadata capture is happening in all Australian ISPs and telcos already, not just the less scrupulous ones, and has been for some time. Part of their licensing approval by the ACMA is the submission of an approved Interception Capability Plan. The only thing up for debate here is the length of time that metadata is to be stored.

      The same metadata you refer to, that is: marketing and sales data licenced to third parties, is not the same metadata that can be obtained by government agencies. It is not personally identifiable information and as such is subject to different legislative restrictions than true metadata is.

    8. Re:Yea no... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      It's not possible. Even just storing DHCP data to meet DMCA requests for a very small telco is gigabytes per day.

      A gigabyte of storage costs less than five cents. There are plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea, but cost of storage is not one of them.

    9. Re:Yea no... by nabsltd · · Score: 1

      A gigabyte of storage costs less than five cents.

      Tier 3 storage from well-known vendors is about $1/GB, plus yearly support costs. Sure, a consumer hard disk is only $0.05/GB, and even an enterprise SAS drive is only about $0.07/GB, but you need an array of these disks, along with the RAM, processors, RAID cards, networking gear, etc., to build up a large storage system.

      At my work, we are building a storage array from parts, using only quality equipment with at least 3 year warranties on every part. We are paying $0.22/GB (which is a steal), but that doesn't cover the cost for the software (which is free as this is a proof of concept, but will cost about $0.10/GB per year if we eventually purchase it). That also doesn't include the cost for the rack, cooling, power, networking gear, etc. So, the real rock-bottom minimum with all costs included for reliable storage is about $0.25/GB for acquisition plus anywhere from $0.10 to $0.50 per GB per year maintenance.

      Now, you could put all the data on tape for a lot less per GB, but you'd also lose almost all the ability to search, and would likely have to spend a lot of time on requests like "John Doe's IP address from Jan 12, 2014 to Mar 27, 2014".

    10. Re:Yea no... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      but if you want to know what IP they had at 12:45:01 on friday the 26th, you also have to know all of that intermediary equipment info to make the link.

      Shouldn't it be enough to know the IP, the date, and to have the notes on the network at the time? Are you using duplicate IP addresses within your network?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re:Yea no... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Now, cable companies are different. I can't really speak to them. They work more like an old Bus network and the COAX is like a big antenna everyone shares

      Cable works with line cards in a head end, the line cards connect out to up converters which connect out to the physical network. The IP gets assigned directly to your CM via MAC, as you say. But some of these guys do use reserved networks, and some don't.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would you keep any of that data you just mentioned? You only need to know their DHCP address and time.

    13. Re:Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should print it on a log printer on continuous paper, that spools down the elevator shaft into the basement. Then when the cops come calling, you send them to the basement: "It's all there... and by the way, watch out for alligators..."

    14. Re:Yea no... by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

      No... think of it this way, the network between your DSL modem and "the internet" is not an IP network. It's all hardware.
      So think about your home router or switch. If you have a computer for you and your wife in the house, and you unplug them from the router, swap the cables and plug them back in... you'd most likely retain the same IP, despite being plugged into a new port.

      Now, if you go to your local Telcos remote, open it up, and swap the cable pair your house is on with your neighbors house, you would now have their IP address and they would have yours. The route is controlled by the physical hardware. Once you got all the way back to the office (or remote office) to the DSL card itself, if you were to swap it after that, then yes, the network would correct itself. But up until that point it's all hardware. This is an artifact of how telephone networks were originally designed back in the day and hung on telegraph lines. So much so, that even fiber routes, which should not care about ports at the MUX, still have to be logged in typical telecom software. So suddenly the port matters. You could redesign the software, and there are projects for that at just about every telco in fact... but that's expensive and a lot of work.

      Cable TV on the other hand, was designed entirely differently. Some of the first cable providers were simply remote communities that didn't have access to local over the air TV. Usually these were mountain communities. The people on one side of the mountain could get the signal, the people on the other side could not (because the mountain was in the way.) So some smart people put up an antena, caught the signal, built a repeater, and then ran a hardline around the mountain to the other side so they could pick it up. Now they couldn't have it on the same channel because of interference so they had to modulate it... So now they had their very own, enclosed broadcast space. Instead of filling the air with signal, they shielded a single wire with ground, and ran the TV signal down the center. Completely by chance, this made nearly the perfect avenue for a bus network. The way a Cable network works is very similar to how cellphones work. The big difference is that the antennas are in their own discrete environment.

      Now, someone will come along and talk about xyz technology that makes everything I said wrong. It's true, there are solutions to all of this. But existing plant infrastructure is worth trillions of dollars. No ones going to just toss it and buy new, especially when the "new" will be outdated in 5yrs anyways. All new tech has to be considered within existing infrastructure.

    15. Re:Yea no... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      No... think of it this way, the network between your DSL modem and "the internet" is not an IP network. It's all hardware.

      Okay, but isn't it keeping track of which MAC the IP was given to, anyway? So ultimately, isn't there a mapping of IP to CPE?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    16. Re:Yea no... by dixonpete · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a job for memristors. Petabytes of instantly accessible memory would probably do the trick. Likely 10 years out.

    17. Re:Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      not after those assholes decided to fuck things up by adding a few more layers of NAT

    18. Re:Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess you missed the part where the device with the MAC that gets assigned an IP address is in the CO.

    19. Re:Yea no... by DeSigna · · Score: 1

      All true to a degree, however in AU at least, there's a couple of caveats.

      First, all physical endpoints must be identifiable. There are some exceptions, but the ACMA carrier licensing regulations around voice and data mean that in 99% of instances, much of the data you're describing must already be logged and made available when presented with a warrant. Much of the infrastructure is already in place. For example, it is illegal to activate a mobile SIM without providing ID (drivers' license information). Your phone number is bound to your SIM identity so when you're making calls, it doesn't matter what the cell infrastructure or backhaul is doing, the CID and IPND data is traceable through all the carriers involved. All services hooking into the PSTN are required to provide valid endpoint location and responsible person data, even IP voice.

      Secondly, with data, the vast majority of Internet connections in Australia are either PPP or mobile. Most residential services (e.g. DSL, NBN, residential fibre) are delivered as PPPoE/A, directly linking an authenticated username with all its account details to an IP history. Actions taken by that IP are easily cross-matched without worrying about matching physical circuits. HFC cable, EoC, fibre ethernet or other L2 tails are uncommon for residential internet and when in place, service providers are still required to supply similar means of match-up to comply with ACMA requirements. Mobile broadband acts similarly, the accounting systems make tracking easy.

      All of this stuff is already in place. All the ISPs I'm aware of are very particular about traffic accounting and logging beyond even what is required by current law. The laws being proposed (as far as I can tell) increase the storage time and expand beyond the scope of the accounting data required now, almost to the point where you're going to be logging netflows, archiving proxy/DNS logs and hanging on to them for a couple of years - huge amounts of data. Unfortunately, all doable, all scalable off the back of existing diagnostic and accounting systems. I've been involved in scoping some of this myself for my employer.

      It'll be expensive, which is what ISPs and CSPs are griping about loudest right now, but there's no crippling technical limitations, no matter how much I wish there was.

    20. Re:Yea no... by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

      No... think of it this way, the network between your DSL modem and "the internet" is not an IP network. It's all hardware.

      Okay, but isn't it keeping track of which MAC the IP was given to, anyway? So ultimately, isn't there a mapping of IP to CPE?

      No. This network is almost entirely analog.
      Even the bits that traverse Fiber/microwave/etc... are converted from analog to digital and back again.

      If you could do what you're suggesting, it would be great. Imagine a tech support agent being able to query the remote card from his desk while talking to you. You'd be able to diagnose the circuit remotely! That'd be great. But in reality, the way it works is the guy at the desk can query your modem and maybe the DSL card, but everything between those 2 devices is transparent.

    21. Re:Yea no... by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

      All true to a degree, however in AU at least, there's a couple of caveats.

      First, all physical endpoints must be identifiable. There are some exceptions, but the ACMA carrier licensing regulations around voice and data mean that in 99% of instances, much of the data you're describing must already be logged and made available when presented with a warrant. Much of the infrastructure is already in place. For example, it is illegal to activate a mobile SIM without providing ID (drivers' license information). Your phone number is bound to your SIM identity so when you're making calls, it doesn't matter what the cell infrastructure or backhaul is doing, the CID and IPND data is traceable through all the carriers involved. All services hooking into the PSTN are required to provide valid endpoint location and responsible person data, even IP voice.

      Correct. And when presented with a warrant, those plant records are reviewed by hand for changes over time. This means the person reviewing the data checks for trouble tickets on every piece of equipment between the customer and the switch and verifies they were indeed the person on that equipment during the time frame in question. Often it's NOT, and you then have a scooby doo mystery on your hands figuring out which calls and such were related to what when and where.

      A report is typed up and forwarded on to the legal authority about a week or more later. I know, I used to handle that at a different company about 7yrs ago. How well do you think that system would work for logging IP traffic? Granted, you could log everything separately and worry about linking it up later... So, I suppose if authorities are willing to wait weeks/months for the data, sure. But if you want network traffic tied directly to customers name in a format that's queryable? no. Basically what I'm saying is, if they want to know "Who was on IP 192.1.1.1 at 3:30pm 10/31/14" and the police are willing to wait a while for that data, then sure. If they, however, want to know "Every site that John visited last month" Yea... good luck.

      Regarding the rest of your post... Yes, Australia has a different... newer network. PPoE would make this a lot easier. I've never worked outside the US and we obviously have the oldest network in the world. I should have clarified that at the start. I sometimes forget that other countries have mono-cultures of networking equipment (Canada for example) so if pretty much all of Australia has PPoE then this is technically fesible, though I suspect there will still be some ISPs this would drive out of business. In the US we have PPoE in some areas as well. But the big thing with the network here is that it's completely different from city to city, even from neighborhood to neighborhood. That's what makes these records such a pain. You can't make a blanket statement about the network at all.

      Lastly, my example of a ping bot that just hit random IPs all day would still kill this with fire. Get any small fraction of users doing such a thing? The ISPs would be doomed.

    22. Re:Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, don't know if you're in Aus or not (we don't have the IRS, or the FDA) but you might want to look at sections 208 and 209 of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act. Even though the telcos will be forced to comply with the new storage terms if the legislation is successfully passed, they charge the LEAs accessing metadata substantial fees to develop, install and maintain a delivery capacity for intercepted communications, in order to recoup their initial expenditure on establishing the lawful interception capability. Expensive up front for the telco, if they don't already have the necessary infrastructure, but they make the money back (and then some).

      I work in the industry (in Australia). Our equivalent CALEA legislation functions very differently.

  5. Aussie Aussie Aussie... USA!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The people of Australia say no! Along with things like, the PM's. is a farken dickhead. Honestly world, personally we all hate him. Love, Australia

  6. 1984? Yeah right if only..... by dablow · · Score: 3

    No point in singling out Ausies, the majority if not all Western governments are logging this. Makes 1984 look like the bastion of the free world....

    1. Re:1984? Yeah right if only..... by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      And we are singling out the "western governments" for this, why exactly?

      Ah yes, I remember a quote I pulled recently:

      *fight the hypocrites - because they are much more dangerous than those who are fundamentally heretics*

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  7. This is fucked up ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    We need a concerted effort by every citizen of the free world to visit a set list of suspicious sites like Muslim terrorist groups, white supremacy, anti-government, how to make a bomb, etc. just to 1.) Load up the data 2.) Devalue the data.

    Let's have a Skype-in and talk to each other, Muslim to Christian, Hindu to Jew.

    Then let's all Friend each other on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.

    Let's go global.

    Let countries deal with GIGO.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  8. Okay, VPN on by default. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Jeez. Why, oh why do you need to assume your entire population is acting criminally? That you want to record everything tells me you don't know what you want.

    1. Re:Okay, VPN on by default. by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      Yes VPN providers will just exit that encrypted Australian usage in another random country. All that will be collected is hours of usage to one ip range for years :)
      Smartphones, tablets would still give up the gps and other data to the mobile network.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  9. Germanys "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" spreading. by Qbertino · · Score: 1

    This is one of the laws that cause the pirate party to rise in Germany a few years ago. This australian law seems like a 1on1 rippoff of the German law that was brought upon us by the likes of Sith-Lord Schäuble himself.

    Yepp, it's Germany folks. Better beer, better cars and even our surveillance laws make you potiticians envious.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
  10. Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Telcos charge the interested party making the request for metadata a fee for that service. Why not just up the fee to make the request cost-neutral/profitable? That ability to charge a reasonable fee for service is legislated already.

  11. Government official on Meta-data by davidwr · · Score: 1

    An anonymous government official once said he never metadata he didn't like.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  12. That would make a nice background application by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Instead of running a background application to help find astronomical objects or help society in other ways, I could run a background application that pretended to be a popular web browser going to a mix of "normal" web sites and web sites that I know my government hates.

    Repeat this over 0.1% of the population and it would muddy the waters for investigators trying to see who is really visiting those web sites and who is just having their computer to it for the sake of doing it.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:That would make a nice background application by Qzukk · · Score: 2

      I figure once the government makes an example out of the first few people to do that, getting 0.1% of the population to join in will be an uphill battle.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    2. Re:That would make a nice background application by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Really.

      That certainly works for porn.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  13. The biggest problem so far by dbIII · · Score: 1

    The biggest problem so far is there is not yet a definition of metadata as used in the bill. The plan is to pass it and then define what data is actually going to be kept later, so it could potentially be everything in web caches and full recordings of telephone calls.

  14. Make it clear to customers by Nkwe · · Score: 1

    I would suggest adding a fee to each bill that is clearly labeled "Government surveillance charge" to drive home the point and to remind customers of what is happening.

  15. That works for a time by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Yes VPN providers will just exit that encrypted Australian usage in another random country. All that will be collected is hours of usage to one ip range for years

    That works for a time, until your VPN provider gets hit by the local-to-them equivalent of the USA's "national security letter."

    Note to Aussies: Don't use a USA-based VPN, at least not as your final "exit node."

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:That works for a time by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Yes it becomes interesting long term. An Australian issued credit card used to buy a VPN product is flagged?
      Buy VPN time with a crypto currency? Then buying crypto currency with an Australian issued credit card is an issue :)
      Australia will just request help from all the more friendly VPN host countries to get credit card lists :)

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  16. Nineteen Eighty-Four by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Nineteen Eighty-Four is timeless.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  17. Prepaid debit gift cards? by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Don't Austrailians have practically-untrackable prepaid, non-refillable debit cards for Father Christmas give out?

    In the USA mass purchases of such cards are traceable or require extra paperwork, as are refillable cards, but you can buy cards for small amounts like $50 at most grocery stores with cash and use them like a debit card. USD$50 should be more than enough for a few months of light-duty VPN use and probably more than enough for a single month of "everything I do goes through the VPN" use for a moderate-level home user.

    The only gotcha I can see is that some of these gift cards aren't good internationally, and even if they are today, I can see governments mandating that as of FUTURE_DATE, cards sold without a record of who bought it must be domestic-use-only.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:Prepaid debit gift cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, we do have those in Oz. I used one to buy my last round of VPN access. I suppose if we were beign reeeeally paranoid about it there might be transaction records which could be linked to security camera footage at the place you bought it, but that at least involves extra parties who might well not hang onto that footage for long (or you could wear a strategic hat or false nose or whatever).

  18. Make the ISPs into targets by davecb · · Score: 1

    We saw this happening in Canada some years back (Thanks, Drew!) with the government of the day proposing ISPs being turned into attractive targets for anyone wanting to impersonate people ("identity theft").

    Worse, the kind of processing required to extract the metadata requires a machine the cost of one's main router, so people proposed ISPs should "just spool everything to disk" for a few days.

    The next thought was to call for a longer retention period...

    --dave
    [It didn't pass, somewhat miraculously]

    --
    davecb@spamcop.net
  19. Dear Dotters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is pronounced "day-tah".

    Not "dad-ah".

    "day-tah".

    HTH

  20. Telco who? by ale2011 · · Score: 1

    When I see these laws, I always wonder who those "telco" companies are supposed to be. Tor nodes and VPN providers don't need to lay cables, they are telco clients. Does the law provide for any server to keep metadata? Hm... that's interesting. I always wanted to see a clear-cut definition of what a server is.

    It looks as if the Internet was designed by someone different from the ITU.

  21. Re:Aussie Aussie Aussie... USA!! by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

    Honestly world, personally we all hate him.

    So how did he get elected?

  22. Next up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... require telecommunications carriers and service providers ...

    Next up, service providers block 'The pirate bay' and other copyright infringing web-sites. This has been proposed as a law.

  23. Re:Aussie Aussie Aussie... USA!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The same way a fair proportion of people believe in invisible Jewish sky zombies.

  24. Just one more abuse from this government by Tagged_84 · · Score: 1

    As an Australia I can tell you this is just one of many abuses and deceptions this government has made, it lied about so many things to get into power and than crafted a fake "economic crisis" once in power ( when economists the world over agreed our economy was the envy of the world ) to try to remove socialized services like health care, welfare and education. The only things they could get through the senate were laws that LOST billions in revenue to the government like the carbon tax and the mining tax because it was "bad for business" ( yet again, economists disagreed ). They are trying to remove the need for telco's to report the number of data requests from government each year even though none of the telco's have complained about it.

    They also performed our biggest terrorist raids ever a couple weeks before pushing through laws that now goal whistler blowers and the journalists who report as well as any citizens who communicate about it for up to 10 years. It was only after these laws passed that the truth came out that the weapon found, which was going to be used on the public, was a plastic toy sword! They have power over the media thanks to Murdoch who compared the last party to Nazis during election time and had a nice front page story saying "Kick this mob out" at one stage. Murdoch is a part of a group known as the IPA who have been getting all their wishlist items checked off by this government, many of us understand he is one of the real leaders of our country.

    Our environmental minister is better known as our "environmental merchant" who is selling out the environment without a care, approving more coal mines when many economists are pointing to established coal mines being abandoned in a few years due to dwindling profits and demand and fast tracking the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef against the World Heritage warnings of placing it in danger. He did this with the help of one of our richest Mining Magnate's who happened to get his new party into power too, for some reason he hasn't got any conflict of interest running a billion dollar mining company while voting on laws that would profit and benefit him personally. Including recently helping pass a pathetic climate change policy that pays companies to plant trees at a cap of $2.5 billion dollars. Yep we apparently have an economic crisis but they removed a carbon tax that was working and generating income with one that no one outside the party believes will work and actually costs public funds.

    For those unaware our PM is also the one who removed the minister for science, took the title of minister for women ( while making many public sexist comments ) and the minister for aboriginals ( while making many offensive and racist remarks ). To top it off as a public servant this comment means I can be fired, because I am not allowed to discuss politics online or appear at political protests.

    1. Re:Just one more abuse from this government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep - all good points. Until this government I had been pretty neutral, politically speaking. Usually, the differences between the major parties are fairly slight, just a matter of the 'lesser of two evils' but Abbott and co. are most certainly the worst the country has ever had. His indulging in dogwhistle politics to try to garner votes by encouraging the racism which lies not far beneath the surface in too many Australians is pretty nasty too. (Also a public servant, btw! :)

  25. Yea no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cute, but no. Mandated compliance is not a service. Otherwise you could charge the IRS a service fee when they want taxes; charge the FDA when they want drugs tested; charge the EPA when they want proper waste disposal.