Greens want better metadata access oversight

Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has warned of what he thinks is a likely ALP opposition “rollover” on data retention.

Speaking to the IT Leaders Forum, a weekend conference for technology media. Ludlam said the opposition is likely to “send a few good, stout-hearted people out to make statements” before caving in.

Ludlam put the position that data retention is driven by politics, and that in place of facts there are “offensive slogans from a prime minister who thinks he can terrify us into putting up with him for another couple of years.”

Ludlam said the point of the Greens' opposition to the bill centres around how to create a regime in which data retention is targeted and discriminate, to overcome an access regime in which he said too many agencies outside the law enforcement community can make requests for data.

While Ludlam said he sees it as reasonable for law enforcement to request basic subscriber data without a warrant, “we have a broken access regime, we have a broken authorisation regime”.

That access regime, Ludlam said, means that while it can be argued that the data retention bill may not create new powers, the powers that already exist stretch far too widely.

Ludlam's speech followed a keynote from Australian Federal Police (AFP) assistant commissioner Tim Morris, who reiterated law enforcement agencies' view that the data retention legislation remains vital to addressing terrorism, organised crime and child abuse.

Saying the data was only intended for use in limited circumstances and on a case-by-case basis, he said “There aren't people just sitting there wondering what's out there and trawling for interesting things … it's illegal.”

From the AFP's point of view, Morris said, the data retention bill does not “provide for new powers”, and that “data on sitting on a carrier's network is not mass surveillance”.

The emergence of the Internet means that “telcos are not retaining some types of data consistently”, Morris said, and said the legal tests that bind law enforcement are more stringent than is generally understood.

The AFP, Morris said, is bound to stick to what is “reasonable and necessary”, which is “not merely what's helpful or expedient”. ®

Bootnote: The author attended the IT Leaders Forum as a guest of the organisers. ®