A shame they can't just encrypt it with a SHA-2 hash.
"What's that? You meant reversible encryption?"
Service providers caught up in Australia's data retention scheme will have to encrypt customer information, but that's about as much guidance as the Attorney-General's Department offers. The advice issued by the Department offers scanty information on what constitutes suitable storage infrastructure, and no advice at all on …
Ahhh yes - let's pass wide-reaching laws now and work out the "finer details" later.
That seems the proper and sensible way to treat the privacy of the entire country. Never mind that some of those "finer details" are exactly the sort of things that tech and privacy experts - as well as ordinary citizens - have been so concerned about.
You know - security of the data and regulations for its access and transmission and other trivialities like that.
Just start collecting - we'll figure the rest out next week or something.
James Hacker: [reads memo] This file contains the complete set of papers, except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967...
James Hacker: Was 1967 a particularly bad winter?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files.
Malcolm is on record as saying that there is no requirement for the data to be held onshore. Encryption was a late amendment requested by the ALP and the Greens, it was not in the original bill. To open up such a large attack surface with no safeguards or even a clue suggests that this is more about cowering the population and forcing self censorship than any effective mechanism for law enforcement or national security.