back to article Oz metadata proposal: no to IP addresses, yes to MAC address logging

Australia's federal government continues to say its proposed (but not yet drafted) metadata retention laws won't impose any new requirements on telecommunications carriers and ISPs. Following the leak of its confidential discussion paper to mainstream news outlets and the publication of the paper by Fairfax (here), Attorney- …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Because it is impossible...

    ... to spoof a MAC address.

    (my cheap - came with the connection I signed up for several years back - ADSL modem even lets you change it in the web interface!)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Because it is impossible...

      Totally my first thought too. MAC addresses are one of the easiest things to change, if you wanna mask yourself

  2. Gray Ham Bronze badge
    Unhappy

    Call me naive, but ...

    Doesn't identifying the destination MAC address imply that at some point you are also recording the requested url and/or IP address?

    That's also the only way I can make sense of Irvine's comment about a phone directory ... if a phone directory contained just a list of phone numbers, it would be pretty useless. However, a phone directory that contains a list of names, linked to the relevant phone number ...

    It appears that this document is once again simply obfuscation to put people off the scent and disguise the actual intent.

    1. Yes Me Silver badge

      Re: Call me naive, but ...

      It certainly means you're grabbing data from an ARP cache, a neighbour discovery cache, or something in the DSLAM etc. In other words you are poking around much closer to the target machine than the normal Snowden-style snooping. Or it means that they have no idea what they're talking about....

  3. dan1980

    "Irvine is more worried about the impost of warrants . . . "

    Awww, is the mean public ruining your day with their insistence on due process, presumption of innocence and the right to privacy? Diddums.

    The arguments around the burden of warrants is so fucking ridiculous it beggars beliefs that they even try to trot it out.

    Right now, they have access to a certain amount of data under certain conditions. Under this arrangement, neither ASIO nor "law enforcement in Australia" has come to a halt so far.

    What is being pushed is access to more data than they currently have. For the moment we can set aside whether additional types of data are being collected because just the increase in retention time makes it a larger pool that is able to be accessed.

    As they are asking for a larger pool of data, it is not unreasonable to impose a stricter regime around granting access to that data. The idea that such extra control and scrutiny would have an adverse impact is preposterous because there could be the option to just not make use of that extra data.

    In other words, the data that is CURRENTLY collected and retained can be accessed under the CURRENT processes but the EXTRA data they collect beyond that must be accessed in accordance with the EXTRA security.

    Oh, but the terrorists . . .

  4. Tom 35

    David Irvine, who yesterday likened “metadata” to a telephone directory.

    A telephone directory that lists every call you have made or received.

  5. Winkypop Silver badge
    Facepalm

    How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Metadata

    LOOK!

    OVER THERE!!

    NASTY TERROR PEEPS!!

  6. P. Lee

    MAC addresses?

    Are they interested to know whether the nasty tewwowists use SNAP or Ethernet II from their routers to the ISP? I'll bet that's really useful and it does imply tapping the first hop on every internet connection. The meta-data in this scenario will gather lots of information about ethernet framing. If URLs are excluded, how about your imap or smtp traffic? What about VOIP? Are they redacting the IP headers?

    This is the the strangest thing I've seen in a long time. It's so ludicrous that I refuse to believe they are that incompetant. This time, I'm going for "liars and deceivers."

  7. -tim
    Black Helicopters

    Unique MACs?

    I know someone involved with the free cheap laptops for students. They bought a bunch and oddly enough only one could hook to the LAN or wifi at a time. Not so good in a school. I was brought in to get a program to give them all unique addresses but since the hardware wouldn't let and address stick, the software picks a number, checks to see if its on the net and then uses it. The result is unique MAC addresses at nearly every connection. Sort of hard for the black helicopters to track down.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "no extra powers & no extra requirements..."

    Dare one ask, if there are no extra powers being conferred on agencies and no extra data retention requirements being placed on service providers, then it sounds like the law does nothing? Which begs the question of why they need it? (Other than the obvious it generates heat and light in the press and on the floor of the chambers...)

    Of course the reality is likely that it definitely does either confer extras powers or expand the data retention regime the ISPs have to cooperate with or both which is why the law is being proposed to begin with and the minister(s) is/are once again either simply telling fibs or merely wrong.

    AC.

  9. JJKing

    Head Secret Squirrel was spouting that they don't break the law with their spy tools. But wait....didn't they just do that during the Tampa incident and illegally spy on Australian citizens and organisations because the corrupt government of the day asked them to do it.

    What a pack of incompetent liars and these clowns compare metadata to a phone directory. That nonce has ZERO IT literacy and probably thinks he knows more about the technical side of the Internet than everyone else in Australia.

    Marx said the object of terrorism is to terrorise people. That means THIS abbott government is a terrorist organisation because they sure as shit terrorise the crap out of me with their lame brained half baked,.... half baked ideas.

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