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back to article Australia's going to need a standalone metadata retention bureau

Australia's proposed mandatory metadata retention laws are being made to look dangerous, but that won't stop them passing the nation's Parliament. Recent voting patterns suggest that opposition parties will more or less wave them through. Community activists, so insular and febrile in support of national broadband network, …

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  1. Glen Turner 666

    Not Amazon but ASIO

    If such a proposal does get up then it won't be put to tender. The "agencies" will make sure they are legislated to provide the service (because that is "more secure") and will charge well over the odds for it. And then in a few decades time we'll find out that they've been sharing it with all and sundry and using it well beyond it's legislated purpose.

    0 0 Reply
    1. GrumpyOldBloke
      Reply Icon

      Re: Not Amazon but ASIO

      The sharing it with all and sundry legislation was passed in the 2nd term of the Rudd government (enthusiastically supported by the not so liberal national party) and thanks to Mr Snowden we now know why. Any central metadata retention bureau would really be about hiding how many surveillance requests were being made by the treasonous mob in canberra.

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  2. Thorne

    Just the beginning

    2 years is just the start. Next will be 5 years and then 10 years and then forever.

    All it will take is a police office to dislike you and go fishing for something to charge you with. Currently they don't need a warrant but getting a warrant is a joke anyway. Just look at the AFP raids on the Muslim terrorists. 150 officers and 30 raids and all they got was one plastic sword.

    Data retention will not make anyone one bit safer and will be just for screwing people's lives. Terrorists will be fine but remember that episode of Game Of Thrones you missed so you downloaded it to catch up...........

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  3. Cpt Blue Bear

    But the Lib-Nat government are against increasing the size of the public service and creating more bureaucracy. Anyway, we are supposed to be having a budget crisis so we can't afford this sort of thing if we are going to pay Boeing for a dozen jet fighters that don't meet the RAAF requirements and still don't work after ten years of development. </sarcasm>

    My guess is they'll dump it on the carriers. They will do a half-arsed job and it won't serve anyone's purpose and there will be a series of screw ups, misidentifications, leaks and misuses. None of this will not be reported for national security reasons and the whole thing will be quietly dismantled somewhere down the track as a cost cutting measure.

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  4. dan1980

    "Hence my belief that Australia will need a central metadata retention bureau to make storing the stuff possible under decent security."

    Agreed. But who said they gave a right toss about 'decent security'?

    Such measures would be there to protect the private information of the people and if they were concerned about doing that, well, this whole article would be moot.

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  5. poopypants

    Realisation

    Despite having a voting system that encourages the emergence of new parties, Australia has never given birth to a political party that meets all of the following:

    - has sane policies

    - is internally democratic

    - is highly principled

    - is free of scandal (by that I mean at the very least that none of them are under police investigation)

    Quite sad really, but does rather explain the current state we are in, and why there is no hope of salvation.

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    1. Thorne
      Reply Icon

      Re: Realisation

      "Despite having a voting system that encourages the emergence of new parties"

      What reality are you from cause it's not this one. Australia has a two party preferential voting system. It is designed to prevent new parties from ever replacing Labor/Liberals. New parties can start as much as they want but will always remain a minor party.

      Despite personal thoughts about One Nation, it highlights everything that is wrong with the Australian system. When One Nation started, in some seats it had up to 48% of the primary vote in some seats but still lost. The two major parties can redirect their preferences to each other to kill off any serious contenders.

      What we need is a graduated preferential system. My first place is worth one vote. Second place a half, third a quarter and so on. It would stop the major parties from controlling the outcome by preference stacking.

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      1. poopypants
        Reply Icon

        @Thorne Re: Realisation

        Actually, compared to the first past the post voting systems in the US and UK, our system does encourage the emergence of minor parties, and explains why the federal senate ballot paper looks like a tablecloth in some states.

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        1. Wombling_Free
          Reply Icon

          Re: @Thorne Realisation

          Yes, a table-cloth full of shills for Clive 'all this is mine' Palmer and the Shooters & Nutjobs Fourth Reich Brigade.

          0 0 Reply
  6. Winkypop Silver badge
    Devil

    I for one will be creating as much metadata as possible

    And where can I invest in server farms?

    0 0 Reply
    1. Wombling_Free
      Reply Icon

      Re: I for one will be creating as much metadata as possible

      I think a small Google Apps script could do a good job of that.

      Might be a nice way to send the incumbent bunch of oxygen thieves broke...

      0 0 Reply
  7. Wombling_Free
    Trollface

    Infinite cheap storage

    I hereby submit my tender to the Fascist Overlord TuckFards that run this F...ine land, for the supply of an infinite metadata, meta-metadata, meta-meta-metadata and pr0n (for the backbenchers and Fred N.) storage site.

    Fee: $25,000,000 single payment licence. That's right, pay once now, and never again, you can keep this cloud storage system as long as you want, put as much metadata / faked evidence against political enemies / kiddie-pr0n as the Government need into it. Guaranteed to store data forever, in TOTAL security.

    One easy to remember address: /dev/null

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  8. JJKing

    "150 officers and 30 raids and all they got was one plastic sword."

    Au contraire mon Capitain but it was a TERRORIST plastic sword and the blue uniformed clowns still called it a weapon. With each raid I feel less and less safe. As Geoffrey Robertson said on Q&A a few weeks ago, Australia has introduced 62 anti-terror pieces of legislation since 2001 and has more a-t legislation than any other country in the world. Doesn't that give you a warm fuzzy feeling NOT?

    Bloody govt can go and collect my multiple VPN metadata all they want. I will do everything I can think of to hinder their spying plans and generally fark them up. Might not be much but if EVERYONE did it......... :-)))

    1 0 Reply
  9. aberglas

    Let Google do it for free

    Why spend tax payers money on bureaucrats or hit consumers with higher ISP fees when I'm sure Google would be more than happy to retain all that meta data indefinitely for free. They would protect it better and Google really understands data mining. Google would do this because they are good corporate citizens.

    What could possible go wrong?

    0 0 Reply

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