"Inconsistent retention and unavailability of this data is hampering investigations and in some cases preventing perpetrators to be brought to justice," he said. "Your chances that your data will be viewed by law enforcement is low," he added. "Those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear." However, he reiterated the AFP only investigates crime retrospectively or where there is an allegation. "We conduct criminal investigations of individuals suspected of committing a criminal offence. It's illegal [to conduct mass surveillance] and it just doesn't happen," Mr Morris said, adding police officers "don't just sit there looking for interesting things" in databases. When asked by Fairfax Media whether the AFP could in future ask to use predictive analytic software to uncover patterns in the data that could foil terrorist attacks, Mr Morris was adamant.

"That's not the way we operate – we investigate specific allegations of criminal conduct. It's unlawful to do it that [predictive] way – it's unlawful now and will be unlawful in the future." Sandeep Rao, who is chief executive of business analytics firm Einsights, recently wrote that the Data Retention Bill would not "necessarily catch many terrorists" without a big data strategy. "While the bill requires telecommunications companies to store customer phone and email records for two years, as part of the government's bid to stop home-grown terrorism, one of the motives for capturing large amounts of data should be to eventually run predictive analytics techniques on that information to understand and hopefully prevent crime before it occurs," Mr Rao said. Mr Morris began his speech by saying "my job here today is not to change your minds… it's to present the fact as we see them." He said metadata had been central in 92 per cent of past counter-terrorism investigations, as well as cybercrime (100 per cent), child protection (87 per cent) and serious organised crime (79 per cent).

While he would not comment on the cost of setting up the metadata retention scheme, he did reveal that the AFP pays around $1.5 million a year to telcos to provide metadata requested for investigations. While Mr Morris said the AFP has only requested metadata on .14 per cent of Australia's 42 million IP address, Greens Communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said it was a small percetage of something "really important". "Metadata doesn't lie and your email records don't lie… they can map in very fine detail your entire life. You start to overlay that with location data, and whatever transactional data is available … and anyone … can map your entire life," Senator Ludlam said at the event. Senator Ludlam reiterated his view that the bill should be sent back to the drawing board, but opined that a deal would be struck between the government and the Labor opposition that would see it passed by the end of March as predicted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. "Please don't let Attonery-General George Brandis and Prime Minister Tony Abbott drag us, in my mind, further down the pipe of the surveillance dystopia," he said while asking journalists to challenge all sides of the argument.

Mr Morris' comments follow federal Attorney-General George Brandis dismissing evidence disputing the usefulness of mandatory retention. He said he trusted Australian intelligence and policing agencies when they say they need the data stored for two years in order to fight terrorism and crime. The comments also come as a police whistleblower told ABC Radio National's Download This Show program on Thursday that the proposed regime would be easily abused and more oversight was needed. The writer is attending Tech Leaders as a guest of organiser MediaConnect.