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Australia Passes Mandatory Data Retention Law
Bismillah writes Opposition from the Green Party and independent members of parliament wasn't enough to stop the ruling conservative Liberal-National coalition from passing Australia's new law that will force telcos and ISPs to store customer metadata for at least two years. Journalists' metadata is not exempted from the retention law, but requires a warrant to access. The metadata of everyone else can be accessed by unspecified government agencies without a warrant however.
I like bias... they don't mention that the labor party all voted it through as well. Greens only opposed it after they learned labor wouldn't, so they would get to claim moral high ground, while it sailed through with bi partisan support. The two year data retension has been in place since the first ISPs started as an industry code of practice decades ago. This law is just formalising and making it clearly mandatory. The meta data has been available and used for decades.
Australia has a couple of big media companies that dominate the media landscape, just as most Western economies do. Those media companies and the two big political parties make use of each, once again just like most western countries. ChunderDownunder has the right idea, but Rupert and the rest won't let the Greens, (or any other disrupters) get any power.
The law tightens the definition of "Journalist" over that in the existing Evidence Act so that this is impractical.
Evidence Act
Journalist means a person who is engaged and active in the publication of news and who may be given information by an informant in the expectation that the information may be published in a news medium.
This law:
(i) a person who is working in a professional capacity as a journalist; or (ii) an employer of such a person;
If you are not being paid to be a journalist or paying someone to be a journalist then you are not a journalist, and warrants are not required, under this law. A subtle and deliberate difference.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
There is another bill to block websites: http://www.itwire.com/governme...
As the metadata law just got passed, and with UK already blocking websites, the word is that VPNs can ALSO be blocked.
I just hope that this law has no hope in being passed.
The only alternative I can see to bypass the VPN blocks is to lease a server elsewhere and VPN through that. They are cheap enough.
There was a poll done by essential media, who do regular party polling (not the best), but often ask interesting questions.
Question + Result here http://essentialvision.com.au/...
The voters of both major parties dont want this legislation, but both parties negotiated so there is "bipartisan support on national security".
No effective opposition mean no effective democracy.
Next up is the censorship bill, or three strikes or whatever which will likely go the same way.