Bill would remove the requirement for telcos to reveal the number of disclosures of customers’ personal data they make to authorities each year

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The federal government is seeking to abolish mandatory reporting by telcos of the number of disclosures made to government agencies for Australians’ personal phone, location and web data.



A bill introduced by communications minister Malcolm Turnbull in the lower house on Wednesday would repeal a series of reporting requirements for telecommunications companies to reveal the number of disclosures they have made each year for warrantless requests for Australians’ personal data.

The government is pushing for a mandatory data retention regime in which telecommunications data is stored for two years, which has sparked concern among privacy advocates.

Greens senator Scott Ludlam and Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm have both expressed alarm at the push to remove the reporting obligations.

If passed, it will mean telecommunications companies can keep secret the total number of disclosures of Australians’ personal data, leaving only statistics compiled from government agencies which reveal less detail.

Ludlam said: “It’s completely outrageous that the government is proposing to remove this information. It’s important information that has recently been used to highlight the overuse of telecommunications data.”

“For the government to decide now that they would rather that information doesn’t exist is absolutely unacceptable.”

“This has nothing to do with streamlining or red tape. The Greens will be moving to amend that bill and I hope we will get support from the opposition and the crossbenchers.”

Leyonhjelm said: “If the government wants to keep their activities secret, it is probably because they shouldn’t be doing this in the first place.”

“At the very least, we are owed some kind of monitoring of invasions of privacy. It is an outrageous double standard that this Government seems to value their own privacy but nobody else’s.”



The explanatory note of the bill argues that the reporting obligations “impose compliance costs on industry without providing an effective consumer protection measure. Accordingly, these obligations are proposed for repeal.”

But Ludlam added: “That argument is completely baseless. Not one single agency has made one single call to relieve themselves of this regulatory burden, this is purely the government trying to hide this sort of information.”

A spokesman for the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said: “While we haven’t changed the substantive measures in the Telecommunications Act imposing requirements on the telcos to keep customer information confidential (except in defined circumstances where disclosure is permitted), we have removed a specific requirement to provide an annual report to the Acma on what instances of disclosure they have made.

“This is clearly a measure aimed at reducing the regulatory burden on telecommunications companies, as evidenced by the fact that it was canvassed in a deregulation discussion paper issued in April.”

Guardian Australia reported on Monday that the total number of government requests for Australians’ phone, location and web data is far higher than government agencies are disclosing, with more than 500,000 separate requests for information made last year.

The latest annual report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) has revealed that there were 582,727 requests for phone, web browsing and location data – commonly known as “metadata” – that can reveal detailed information about a person’s personal lives and associations.

These Acma report figures would not exist if the government succeeded in pushing through the legislation.

The Acma figure is at odds with the more widely cited number of 300,000 a year, which is disclosed in the annual telecommunications interception reports made by the attorney general’s departments.

When government bodies request personal information from a carrier – for instance to try to determine mobile and web data – that series of requests is often conflated and only counted as a single request.

This approach leaves it to the discretion of agencies to combine requests from multiple carriers to be counted as just one “authorisation”.

An inquiry chaired by Ludlam into the operation of the telecommunications interception and access act is due to report at the end of October.