Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Australia Passes Mandatory Data Retention Law

Posted by timothy on from the what's-in-the-box dept.

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.

25 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Don't blame me. by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Funny

    I voted Greens.

    1. Re:Don't blame me. by thesupraman · · Score: 2

      Well, I guess your data will be of interest then..

      The 'solution' to this is of course organised poisoning of these databases through both randomised access and proxy/encryption use, which if used enough makes the data useless. Unfortunately that takes a lot of people to make it work.. and most people just dont understand the ramifications.

      I wonder what it takes to be classified as a 'journalist' (but then I doubt it makes any difference, because how would they know if such rules are followed..)

    2. Re: Don't blame me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You do know the greens today are pretty much labor a couple decades ago? And labor is what liberals were, with liberals now being conservatives and having nothing to do with liberalism.

      If you didn't just vote for your favourite colour but actually voted based on your beliefs you would either vote for different and new parties over the years or rapidly change your beliefs and values to keep up with the decline of the two major parties.

      Also I've been busy, set up 3 new VPNs last night. Going to be a busy 6-12 months!

    3. Re:Don't blame me. by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 2

      You did hear the news that Australia is attempting to ban proxies/VPN use, right? So your 'solution' may soon be illegal in Australia.

    4. Re:Don't blame me. by mars-nl · · Score: 2

      Better download Tor while you still can/may.

    5. Re:Don't blame me. by currently_awake · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If an undercover cop follows you around the city without a warrant it's stalking, but if they use the cellphone system (without a warrant) to do the same thing it's not?

  2. Re:Hugh Pickens and Bennett Haselton: journalists? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Please see current government definition:

    Journalist : Some one who write pro-government articles and will willingly share the sources with said government

    Non-Journalist : Everyone else.

  3. Not new by sectokia · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. That's handy by LessThanObvious · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good thing they have all that metadata to parse so it's easy to know who the journalist are, you know, so they can get a warrant before accessing their data.

  5. What difference does it make by GrahamJ · · Score: 2

    if the Five Eyes slurp it all up anyway? They already have access to these data, why bother making ISPs keep it too?

    1. Re:What difference does it make by GumphMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Making the ISP keep it too:

      1. Makes it reliably available for litigation by big media over copyright infringement and removes the ability of ISP to defend customer privacy with inconvenient legal actions or by simply not holding the information. Hosting privacy protecting proxy/VPN services has essentially be outlawed on Australian soil... or will be as the holes in this legislation become evident and the scope creep continues.
      2. Makes it reliably available for abuse by political parties: want to know who leaked the embarrassing x? Simple warrantless search with no oversight.
      --
      Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
    2. Re:What difference does it make by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      To stupidly force the creation of apps that will run on people's computers randomly accessing all kinds of sites all over the internet to flood the databases with hundreds of thousands of bogus entries. Nothing does more to destroy databases than bogus entries that poison it to death. When 90% of your browser data requests are fake and cancelled prior to retrieving the data, what are they left with, apart from a massive bill ten times bigger than they expected. Let's just flood the crap out of meta-data, they want to pry, let them pry into an completely fake illusion.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  6. Re:Hugh Pickens and Bennett Haselton: journalists? by youngone · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  7. Re:Why not? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Both the Government (Liberal/National) and main opposition party (Labor) voted for the legislation.

    That's about 90% of the parliament wanting to throw us under a bus, so I'm not sure how voting for a non-niche party would have helped.

  8. Thanks for the reminder by blackpaw · · Score: 2

    I activated my VPN after seeing the headline, I keep forgetting to do that.

    I should trial configuring it on my router.

  9. A bit more worrisome... by Letophoro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    is that it also makes warrant canaries illegal.

  10. Not sure if this is worse by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Isn't it better for people in Australia to know their network data will be retained for two years, than for the people in the U.S. to be unaware data is being retained, but then in actuality have it retained forever by the NSA?

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Not sure if this is worse by agendi · · Score: 2

      This is so that ISP's have to retain it for 2 years. The Govt. can gather it and keep it indefinitely. Though terrorism was the bogey man used to get this through, this law is more about discouraging whistle-blowers.

      --
      I just can't be bothered.
  11. Re:Hack for a shitty law by GumphMaster · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  12. Re:Hack for a shitty law by vux984 · · Score: 2

    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.

    If you are collecting ad revenue from your blog, that's good enough to make a hobbyiest a "commercial drone operator" subject to FAA regulations in the USA. Maybe that'll work for "journalists" in Australia.

  13. I tried by MrKaos · · Score: 2
    stroy to /.

    and I wrote to the politicians as well, bad day for Australia.

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
    1. Re:I tried by MrKaos · · Score: 2

      It's ok to protect ordinary people from organised crime, right? I've been writing letters to senators to try and let them know why it was such a bad idea all week. Why is it all the really fucked bills have to be 'rushed through'. I reckon the game for politicians is how well they can deceive the population, en masse to pass these really nasty laws whilst the media serves to keep everyone in the dark. They must be high fiving each other now.

      I analysed the bill and whilst I won't include the letters I wrote to the senate, these are the sections of part one I thought needed to be amended to protect the population from fraud and slashdotters will probably get this immediately.

      Criticisms of specific sections in Part one:

      187AA.3A,3B remove because it introduces the possibility that any e-commerce business that is not a telecommunications provider can be forced to retain data and bare the cost of limiting their business throughput and capacity for expansion. For business this represents a rising linear cost that increases with additional customers.

      187B.2 Needs definition of who a CAC (Communications Access Controller) role answers to, which department, and limits to retention demands

      187B.2A change 'may' to 'must'

      187B.3.c Remove. Additional requirements from the CAC impose incremental infrastructure and capacity restraints on business coupled with forcing them into I.P cost and approval cycles every time infrastructure upgrades are required as a result of demands from the CAC. The business is forced to write for approval for mandatory upgrades to meet retention requirements demanded by the CAC.

      187BA.a Specify an minimum standard for encryption of data. Governmental should mandate minimum encryption standards revised regularly to protect consumers from fraud, organised crime, identity theft, harassment and so on. The same standard should control access to the data from all parties.

      187BA.c add allow encrypted access to the data by the entity or person that generated it.

      187E.2.b,c service providers must never be exempt from section 187BA when storing entity or personally generated data 187F.2.a add ensure adherence to encryption standards in 187BA; and

      187F.2.b add: whilst still complying with 187BA

      187F.2.f remove for the same reason as 187B.3.c

      187G.1 Law enforcement uses a secured access standard under 187BA.a to access the data

      187G.2.d change 'may' to 'must'

      187G 4,5 Define a criteria for the ACMA's collection requirements

      187K.1.d add: not approve an exemption from 187BA

      187KA.4 define the ACMA's relation to policing here

      187KA.4.f add: input from the PC and T.O

      187KA.5 remove: ACMA considerations have nothing to do with policing for terrorists

      187LA Should provide protection from abuse from government employees

      187M add: Section 187BA(a)(b),

      To clue you all in Section 187AA is the meat of the 80 page bill that defines what is captured. Section 187BA(a)(b) define, weakly, how the population will be protected from fraud. Whilst the single word change of 187B.2A is the critical change required to protect people from harrasement. 187G.2.d give ISPs an out for complying with 187BA which further weakens the publics protection.

      I feel sorry for my country and it's people. I work in IT, I understand how people will be defrauded because I've seen it and now I think it is inevitable that these cases will be more common. Our constitution says Australians are guaranteed 'responsible government' however I see this bill as a very dangerous instrument that will be abused because it simply doesn't have any protections for Australians - how is that responsible government.

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  14. Re:Useless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  15. [POLL] Only 12% of voters support warrantless spyi by bug1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  16. A bit more for US etc readers by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ALP want to appear to offer a "united front" on anything related to security or terrorism because of the "if you are not with us you are with the enemy" approach the government has pushed on occasion. Also the individuals in the ALP don't know enough about the issue to think it's important enough to pick a fight over. That's a bit of an artifact of many Australian politicians starting their career from student politics and having little exposure to anything else outside politics, so metadata to them is just "computer shit" and nothing of importance.
    Very disappointing but not unexpected since Conroy of the ALP was pushing for similar things when he had the power to do so.