Telstra wins AU$39 million for data retention costs as grants revealed Australia's attorney-general The Hon Senator George Brandis has announcedAU$128m in grants to telcos to fund their data retention efforts. The announcement says “One hundred and eighty service providers will receive support through the programme.” “Most providers will receive a grant of 80% of their implementation costs,” …
And they reckon that's 80% of the cost?
lol
If I were a telco, I think I'd opt for microfiche as the storage medium with rotating unicode character sets written out in morse-code.
And I'd send a readable copy to my subscribers every month, saying, "this data is what the government is forcing us to store about you this month. It will be kept for x years in case you are a criminal. Here is a list of VPN providers and instructions on how to configure your PC to use them."
I think I'd opt for microfiche as the storage medium with rotating unicode character sets written out in morse-code.
I like the basic idea but I aould also encrypt it with a 4096 byte key that changes daily. The key would be stored separately, spelt out in words not numbers by a doctor (or any other usually illegible handwriting), on tissue paper using felt tipped markers.
The problem with sending the data to the subscribers is that the authorities would change the rules to insist that you keep a copy of the message in "clear text" and send it to them.
If the government really want ISPs to do this, they should do one of two things.
1. Cover the entire cost out of general revenue; or
2. Permit ISPs to charge a specific data retention fee to their customers every month.
The *last* thing you want is for ISPs to try to monetise that datastore in some way to recover costs.
“Communications data is used in nearly every counter-terrorism, counter-espionage and major crime investigation. It is also essential for the investigation of child abuse and child pornography offences, which are frequently carried out online.”
As always with the mass surveillance tools/legislation the world over the mantra is "Protect us from Terrorism" and "Protect the children"
Properly protect? Not a chance. If DoD was successfully hacked what hope is there for the rest. This is another Canberra policy disaster Arrogance with ignorance - thanks Bill and Tony. TPG's grant is interesting (only 1.4M) despite being the countries 2nd largest ISP. While I understand the top 3 have a multi technology mix of networks and applications and these are more expensive to support (eh Malcolm) what is a small company like Exetel (1.8M) doing that TPG is not. 1.4M suggests that TPG is off shoring and or dumping to tape at major network aggregation points. If the former - give up on the idea of security. If the later then there is some hope as access beyond the tape online storage boundary will require a physical presence at wherever the tapes will be stored.
Unless telco mandatory data retention is just smoke and mirrors and the real action is happening with the hidden servers per the Confidential Commodities List (rept in el Reg) and the ASIO/DSD/AFP business collaboration centres being opened in our state capitals are really about receiving the live feeds. The AFP and the spooks are not bound by the 2 year retention limit. We then have a clear case of win-lose which is how our bought and paid for government works. Canberra can claim that they only approach the telco's a small number of times for the very worst drug dealing child pornographing terrorist cases and the spooks get to throw proportionality and targeting out the window with the rest of their 5-eyes (+1) rabble. I just can't see 1.4M covering the costs this legislation is imposing. The 600+M that Abbott gave to the security services during his rein of terror seems closer to the number required to sell out a nation of this size.
... Somebody getting some joy out of the government's snooping on its citizens, invading our privacy, and diminishing oru standard of life in ways that the terrorists could never hope to ... all in pursuit of an unattainable perfect security.
Of course, the fact that taxpayers (the 'snoopees') are paying for the government (the 'snoopers') to compensate third party rent-seekers for keeping the metadata and other info ('snooping') may be of concern to some ...
But it's good to see some joy being spread around.
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