This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

Australian federal police accessed the metadata of journalists 20 times and obtained six journalist information warrants to identify those journalists’ sources in the last financial year.

The data is contained in the federal government’s report on law enforcement agencies’ use of telecommunications data for investigating crimes and surveillance for the 2018-19 financial year.

Under the mandatory data retention legislation, law enforcement must get a warrant to access a journalist’s historical telecommunications metadata – including information on who they called, when they called or their location information.

The journalist subject to the warrant has no knowledge that a warrant has been sought or issued, but a prime minister appointed public interest advocate can make submissions about whether to issue or refuse the warrant.

The AFP was the only law enforcement agency to seek warrants to hunt down sources in the financial year, and came in a year where the AFP conducted raids at the ABC and on the home of the News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst in relation to leaks of government information.

The high-profile raids led to a campaign from a broad range of media outlets in Australia, including Guardian Australia, for greater press freedom, and resulted in two parliamentary inquiries into press freedom.

Late last year, the Right to Know coalition proposed to the joint parliamentary committee on intelligence and security amendments to legislation that would exempt journalists from criminal liability for bona fide reporting activity. It would also make the journalist information warrants contestable, where the journalist could present evidence or contest the application for the warrant.

Concrete action rather than nice words are needed on press freedom | Lenore Taylor Read more

After last year’s raids, the AFP was issued with a direction from the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, to consider the public interest implications before investigating leaks to journalists.

The number of warrants sought is a threefold increase, but there was an overall reduction in the amount of data sought compared with the two warrants issued and 58 authorisations in the 2017-18 financial year.

The report also reveals, for the first time, how law enforcement agencies are using the government’s new anti-encryption legislation passed at the end of 2018.

The AFP issued five technical assistance requests to tech companies, while New South Wales police issued two Tars.

Tars are notices sent to tech companies or individuals seeking voluntary assistance for the purpose of investigating a serious crime. It is one stage below forcing compliance with a technical assistance notice, under threat of fines of up to $10m or jail time for individuals.

The highly secretive nature of the notices means it is not revealed which companies were involved, or what assistance was offered. The report states that the offences being investigated that required companies to provide a means into otherwise encrypted data included cybercrime, homicide, illicit drug offences, organised crime, theft and telecommunications offences.

The number of times metadata is handed over has remained relatively stable, at 295,691 for the financial year, compared with 301,124 for the previous year. The majority of these authorisations were related to illicit drug offences, fraud or homicide.

The cost to the telecommunications industry to manage the data retention regime on behalf of law enforcement continued to decline in 2018-19, down to $17m compared with $35m the previous year. The amount of money recouped from law enforcement agencies was $7.4m. The total cost of the program since it was implemented in 2015 has been $229m for telecommunications companies, with $46.5m collected back from law enforcement.