OPPOSITION communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has given a thumbs down to the government's plan to allow greater interception and retention of private digital information.

Mr Turnbull said although he did not want to pre-empt the findings of a parliamentary inquiry, he had ''very grave misgivings'' about the proposal, which would give government more ability to monitor and gain access to data.

"If I can throw my diary and my photo album in the bin, why can I not delete my Facebook page?" ... Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

''It seems to be heading in precisely the wrong direction,'' he said, delivering the Alfred Deakin Lecture in Melbourne.

''As the digital age shifted us from a default position of forgetting things to one of perpetual memory, we should be restoring as far as possible people's right not just to privacy, but to be able to delete material as they have been able to do in the analogue world.''