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.

6 of 124 comments (clear)

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

    I voted Greens.

    1. 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. 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.

  3. 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.

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

    is that it also makes warrant canaries illegal.

  5. 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