BURIED: Oz gov won't reveal telcos' guess at data retention costs

"Australian federal government data retention plans remain in disarray . . ."

If only that meant that it wasn't going to be passed.

The point is that the Coalition want to pass it and Labor want to pass it. They don't need to listen to the people or experts or reason. They can pass it and they will pass it and they will continue to simply brush off any criticisms meet calls for clarification with silence of misinformation.

And it's been confirmed useless anyway

Yes, you read that right - the government has admitted that overseas service providers, cafes and many other organisation types won't be required to store any metadata nor make what they do store available without a warrant.

So if you want to continue your nefarious plans, you have to ... make sure you don't use your ISP email, and log on to your TerryWrist198109@gmail.com account at Starbucks et al (or at work).

This needs the "Genius" meme applied liberally. Or perhaps the heavy-handed and repeated application of a hammer to the privates of each person proposing it.