Will Ockenden reported this story on Wednesday, April 2, 2014 18:26:00

MARK COLVIN: The country's second-biggest internet service provider iiNet has criticised the growing number of law enforcement agencies pushing for the introduction of a mandatory data retention regime.



The Federal, NT (Northern Territory), Victorian and WA (Western Australia) police forces have all recently supported the introduction of a scheme which would store the internet use of citizens for two years.



iiNet says assurances that it's only metadata, not content, that would be stored are a fallacy, and the system would cost its internet users $60 million.



Will Ockenden reports.



WILL OCKENDEN: The country's second-largest ISP iiNet has hit out at a growing number of Australian police forces pushing for the introduction of mandatory data retention policies.



STEVE DALBY: They want to keep everything on everybody, and we just think that's a massive overkill.



WILL OCKENDEN: Steve Dalby is the chief regulatory officer at iiNet.



STEVE DALBY: At the moment they can get a warrant or a court order or some other appropriate instrument and request us to record information on people of interest.



WILL OCKENDEN: That lasts for 90 days, and the data is recorded and stored.



STEVE DALBY: It's a long way from recording information about a person of interest to recording everything about everybody in Australia.



WILL OCKENDEN: In the wake of the leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden, a Senate Committee is reviewing surveillance legislation.



The submissions from law enforcement and intelligence agencies have supported the idea of making ISPs store internet data for two years.



STEVE DALBY: Our concern is the commentary that we've seen from Northern Territory Police and other police forces - including the Attorney-General's Department in the previous government - was that we should keep everything on everybody.



WILL OCKENDEN: Interception of Australian's telecommunications data is already widespread.



Last financial year around 40 government departments and agencies made nearly 300,000 requests for telecommunications metadata for a "law enforcement purpose".



While police agencies like the Australian Federal Police feature heavily, the same access laws have been used by the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and - increasingly - local councils.



STEVE DALBY: I don't disagree with the argument that law enforcement needs the tools to do their job properly. There's got to be a bit more evidence about people misusing telecommunications infrastructure to commit crimes or do something illegal, and then you focus in on those people. It's just an overreach and an overkill to store the calls and the website activity of my 12-year-old niece.



WILL OCKENDEN: In the submission, iiNet questions the practicality of storing internet use data as more and more devices end up online.



STEVE DALBY: If we have to store all that information for two years, we'd have to build a new data centre, which we've estimated to cost about $60 million.



WILL OCKENDEN: So that would be the once-off fee which would then presumably be passed back on to consumers. What would the yearly cost be?



STEVE DALBY: Internet usage is growing daily. Sixty million might be enough for today's traffic, but in the future it won't be sufficient.



WILL OCKENDEN: The Federal Government is not currently considering any proposal for mandatory data retention.



Privacy activists hoping for Labor support are unlikely to find happiness. While it isn't her portfolio, Labor's shadow foreign minister Tanya Plibersek on Sunday told Sky News that mandatory data retention was essential.



TANYA PLIBERSEK: We always need to balance the expectations people have of living in a democratic and open society, but I certainly want to make it as easy for security agencies to do their job of protecting Australians from threat as we can.



I think there is a misconception in the Australian public about the sort of data that's retained in these circumstances. I think some people imagine that security agencies can go back and listen to the phone call you made to your mum 18 months ago about what time you're going to be home for dinner.



The information that is kept in these circumstances is basically, you could describe it as the envelope that the message comes in; who called whom and when.



People describe it as keeping the haystack so you can go back and look for the needle afterwards.



WILL OCKENDEN: But as PM broadcast last month, telephone metadata shows far more about an individual life than is often admitted.



Stanford University graduate student Jonathan Mayer runs a project called Metaphone, where the phone metadata of volunteers is tracked.



JONATHAN MAYER: We were able to learn about medical conditions, we were able to learn about gun ownership, we were able to learn about religious denominations. I think our latest results substantially undercut the view that 'it's just metadata'.



WILL OCKENDEN: It's a sentiment Steve Dalby from iiNet agrees with.



STEVE DALBY: You can't put the word 'just' in front of it and pretend that it means something less than what it actually is. Metadata is the address details of the content. So if you know the address details of the content, you can see what the content is.



MARK COLVIN: Steve Dalby from iiNet ending Will Ockenden's report.