The federal government's new data retention regime enhances the ability of law enforcement agencies, including federal and state police, to investigate terrorism and other criminal activities. However, it threatens to do the opposite for the nation's corporate law enforcer, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft is understood to have written to Attorney-General George Brandis and Senator Mathias Cormann in Brandis' capacity as acting Assistant Treasurer to express significant concern about the bill that amends the data retention regime, and warn that it could gut the regulator as a white-collar crime-buster.

The bill that Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull introduced in Parliament on October 30 eases concerns about the new requirement that telecommunications companies retain communications metadata for two years by limiting the number of agencies that can access the stored information.

ASIC is able to access stored metadata under the existing regime, but is not one of the dozen agencies given access to metadata in the amending bill.

Information it has gathered as part of investigations of corporate crime in the past, including basic information on telephone calls and emails, will not be able to be obtained for investigations under the new regime unless it is given special clearance by the government.