08:31

Police have committed a series of illegal metadata searches, including Western Australian police obtaining invalid warrants targeting journalists and ACT police accessing data 116 times without proper authorisation.

The breaches of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act are revealed in a Commonwealth Ombudsman report for the period July 2016 to June 2017, tabled in parliament by the government on Monday.

In addition to one instance of the Australian federal police accessing a journalist’s data without a warrant reported in 2017, the ombudsman discovered two instances where the WA police applied for – and obtained – a journalist information warrant from a person not authorised to provide it.

“This occurred due to a lack of awareness by WA police regarding to whom an application for a journalist information warrant could be made,” the report said. “In response to this issue, WA police took steps to quarantine all information obtained under the invalid warrants.”

The report also revealed that between 13 and 26 October 2015 “all authorisations within ACT policing were made by an officer not authorised” by the relevant section of the law.

“This issue affected 116 authorisations during the period,” it said. “This issue also affected a large number of authorisations dating back to March 2015, which precede the commencement of our office’s oversight on 13 October 2015.”