Spooks, cops, say Oz metadata push is for consistency, not data grab

Rolls eyes - they don't need IP addresses a URL is metadata. Besides in a virtual apache setup the IP could belong to one of 100+ vhosts making it completely pointless. The URL would point to a unique web site regardless of when it got moved around and tell them exactly what was accessed.

Collecting your metadata just sounds better than saying "we haz all yr URLz!" sounds like the hapless spook and fed po po were completely clueless about what they were talking about. How bad would it sound if the government admitted - yes we track every single you enter into an address bar and everything single html element you access and every single click you make.

To actually look at a user's data will require a warrant

..or a slow Friday afternoon fishing expedition. I can see it now:

'Hey, I have a list of websites here. Let's run through the 'metadata' and see who we can catch. All it takes is for Abbot or one of his creeps to make some bogus statement about how this crime or that murder could have been prevented if only our brave boys in blue could have got to the data quicker.

Cue the announcement of a centralised mirror where every ISP can send the data.

Only accessible to properly authorised people of course, like bored operatives or people showing off to their mates, or a cop looking for something to teach the bastard who bought the last doughnut in the shop a bloody good lesson.

Don't know about you, but I feel safer already.

Look ... I believe these guys ...

Because spooks are inherently trustworthy and wouldn't do anything to hurt anyone.

I mean, if you can't trust spies ... who can you trust?

"Colvin offered an example of the AFP obtaining intelligence that an Australian IP address visited an offensive web site. Under those circumstances, Colvin said, the AFP could execute a search warrant among Australian ISPs to determine if that IP address was used by one of their subscribers. If that search proved positive, the AFP could conduct a warrantless search to retrieve metadata associated with that IP address. To actually examine the content the user of that IP address accessed would then require a warrant."

So you execute a search warrant amongst ISPs to determine if the IP address is used by one of their customers but then a warrantless search to retrieve metadata. Why? If you need and can obtain a warrant for the first part surely you can get one for the second. If your argument is that it is too time consuming then you're a f*cking liar as you need to get the first warrant anyhow. This is just bollocks.

Don't isp's get ip's in blocks from the register? Could they not just use that to find if an IP belongs to an isp's customer? Makes no sense.

It's all about your own personal IP Address

According to Snowden and other sources the intelligence agencies take a full internet feed via intercepts at major peering points. This intercept provides the agencies with the source and destination IP addresses, contained within every packet. The one critical piece of information the agencies lack is the correlation of your IP address and your street address, or on a cellphone your IP address and phone number. Given that there is a shortage of IP address (v4) each home user is typically allocated a short term lease for their personal IP, so it can change reasonably frequently. So the agencies have all this data but are not really certain who belongs to it. So they need to have the ISPs keep a long term record of personal IP addresses associated with your street address (via router MAC address) or your cellphone number.