The Federal government of Australia, back in 2015, passed a controversial law whereby the carriage service providers or broadband providers are required to store all non-content data or metadata of their customers for up to a period of two years to help out law enforcement agencies.

But, there’s more to it. … Due to a legal loophole in the legislation, telecom companies like Telstra weren’t required to actually store all this data, until now.

So beginning this week, all the juicy and secret metadata of Aussies will be retained by broadband companies and will be shared with the government, and just so you know, they don’t need a warrant for that.

So what actually is metadata?

Think of metadata as the information on the package, rather than what’s inside the package. So it’s not the content of your WhatsApp conversation, but the details around who you were talking to and for how long were you engaged in the conversation.

Another example of metadata retention is for instance if you visit a website or a forum, the broadband companies will have to share the website you visited along with the time duration with the authorities. However, the broadband companies are not liable to share what you do on that website.

The law is opposed by all privacy advocates but is supported by both Labor and Coalition. According to Quentin Dempster, a journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald, the law will turn the country’s entire communication system into a surveillance mechanism for at least 21 of the government agencies active in the country.

What’s happening this week?

The telecom companies were given a period of 18 months to come up with plans for effective data retention or, as they would say in marketing terms, “data retention strategies.” This time period was apparently requested by Australia’s top three telecom companies namely Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone.

So now that the 18 months are up, today, by law, all the metadata of Australian citizens will be retained by broadband companies.

And the story doesn’t end here. The government wants to do more than just catch bad guys with metadata. It wants to use it as evidence in divorce case proceedings, child custody cases, and employer-employee disputes.

The Digital Rights Watch, a digital advocacy group, has declared tomorrow “National Get a VPN Day.”

Junaid Mohsin writes about online security and currently works as Cyber Security Adviser for Ivacy VPN.