At least in America, the authorities feel a need to lie to the public while engaging in invasive and tyrannical warrantless surveillance. In Australia, a nation in which you are more likely to die by hitting a kangaroo with your car than in a terrorist attack, government officials have no qualms with doing it right in your face.

We learn from the Sydney Morning Herald:

The digital privacy of Australians ends from Tuesday, October 13. On that day this country’s entire communications industry will be turned into a surveillance and monitoring arm of at least 21 agencies of executive government. The electronically logged data of mobile, landline voice (including missed and failed) calls and text messages, all emails, download volumes and location information will be mandatorily retained by Australian telcos and ISPs. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies will have immediate, warrantless and accumulating access to all telephone and internet metadata required by law, with a $2 million penalty for telcos and ISPs that don’t comply. There is nothing in the Act to prevent investigative “fishing expeditions” or systemic abuse of power except for retrospective oversight by the Commonwealth Ombudsman. That’s if you somehow found out about an agency looking into your metadata – which is unlikely, as there’s a two-year jail sentence for anyone caught revealing information about instances of metadata access.

Pretty soon, the penalty will be beheading. That’ll show ISIS!

Over time, your metadata will expose your private email, SMS and fixed-line caller traffic, consumer, work and professional activities and habits, showing the patterns of all your communications, your commercial transactions and monetized subscriptions or downloads, exactly who you communicate with, and how often. People are being asked by the Federal Parliament to accept that this regime of agency access is vitally necessary for national security at a time of geo-political tension, jihadi recruitment and the war on terror. But in a country where the biggest terrorism threat comes from lone wolves and random acts of terror, it’s a system that appears singularly ill-equipped to catch terrorists. What it does is render privacy a thing of Australia’s past. In the US the recently passed Freedom Act constrains security agencies’ access to call records not considered essential for preventing terror attacks. In Israel, facing far more immediate security concerns than Australia, there is no mandatory metadata retention law as it is not seen as a proportionate response to the security threats the country faces.

Can people really be so completely stupid to think this has anything to do with terrorism?

But not everyone is convinced that scooping up everyone’s metadata is the way to catch terrorists. Former National Security Agency analyst Thomas Drake, who preceded Edward Snowden in blowing the whistle on unconstitutional surveillance in the US, last year told a Walkley Foundation seminar in Sydney that the NSA’s massive data surveillance vacuum cleaner had not exposed or thwarted any terror plots.

Eh, just a minor inconvenience. Move along serfs.

In Australia, a policy launched in confusion – infamously catching out Attorney General George Brandis who was unable to explain exactly what metadata was – is still crammed with contradiction and obfuscation now it’s written in law. Web browsing history – the record of actual sites visited – is excluded from the metadata to be stored: a strange omission, from a national security perspective. “For many telcos, they will likely start storing destination IP addresses from October 13 because it will be difficult for them to remove (this data) in many cases, especially for mobile carriers due to the way their systems are designed,” Grubb said.

So, the fact that you visited a porn site or infidelity site Ashley Madison or “jihadi” content sites, may in effect be discoverable without the need for a warrant. The Privacy Act allows a citizen to access and correct their metadata if he/she is interested so to do. However, you will not be informed if it has been viewed by ASIO or any other agency. There is a two-year prison sentence for disclosing any information about authorised access to your data. The information being kept may also be accessed for civil litigation but only if the Attorney General creates regulations to allow it. You are not given notice and consent options for the commercial use of your metadata as you are with personal information. Baker & McKenzie’s Fair told Fairfax Media a person’s metadata can be reviewed at any time by agencies without that person’s knowledge and it might be used for or against you in court. The new law does not allow any agency at unauthorised will to tap your phone, read your texts or watch you in real time as you use email, do your online banking or browse the internet. While technology now being implemented by the industry will have this invasive real-time capability, it is not lawful in Australia without a court-ordered warrant. But if the digital footprint you are creating raises suspicion after an examination of your metadata, the retained evidence may be grounds for a digital surveillance or phone tap warrant to be issued. The Telecommunications Interception Act requires all communications providers to have a real time interception capability. So it is one small (lawful) step from metadata collection to interception and continuous surveillance. For obvious operational reasons surveillance warrants issued by the courts are top secret. Now here’s the best part mates. YOU get to pay for it! And there is a confrontation coming between the government and the industry over the cost of compliance. While Treasurer Joe Hockey’s May budget stumped up $131 million to be shared by the industry to cover compliance, industry leaders say this will not cover the enormity of the task and that consumers will have to pay more for services. Inevitably consumers will call this a “surveillance tax”. Because of the complexity of compliance, a new “industry” is being created with many registered service providers seeking to outsource their compliance obligations to specialists approved by the CAC. This necessarily will broaden the entities with access to your metadata. Again Australian subscribers will be left to trust in the integrity of not just the government agencies but the outsourcers who will have access to their metadata. What do you expect when this guy is your Prime Minister.. For more from “down under,” see: Australian Senate Kills Civil Liberties with Draconian New Anti-Terror Law in Orwellian Orgy of Baseless Fear-Mongering Australia’s Prime Minster Admits Metadata Collection is for “General Crime” Not Terrorism Video of the Day – Meet Australia’s Creepy Prime Minister, Tony Abbott Anti-Protest Law Passes in Australia – Punishment Includes Fines and Imprisonment Australian Government to Seize Cash from Inactive Bank Accounts Australia’s New Law Destroys Internet Freedom



In Liberty,

Michael Krieger



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