The legislative framework that governs Australia's intelligence community is "unnecessarily complex". It leads to "unclear and confusing laws" for the intelligence officers who have to interpret and follow them.
So said the
final report of the
Comprehensive review of the legal framework of the National Intelligence Community in December 2019 -- although the government didn't publish it until a year later, in December 2020. Comprehensive indeed: Even the unclassified version runs to more than 1,300 pages.
That review, conducted by former diplomat, public servant, and one-time ASIO chief
Dennis Richardson, recommended that as far as electronic surveillance goes, Australia needs a whole new electronic surveillance Act.
As Richardson noted, when the core
Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (TIA Act) was originally passed, it was just 19 pages long. But by the end of 2019, it had blown out to 411 pages.
"The TIA Act itself rests on outdated technological assumptions, and has become complex to the point of being opaque. We are not the first review to recommend its reform," Richardson wrote.
"Technological change and convergence has resulted in telecommunications interception, covert access to stored communications and computers, and the use of optical and listening devices... becoming functionally equivalent."
Currently, though, these activities are subject to "inconsistent limits, controls and safeguards" across the TIA Act, the
Surveillance Devices Act 2004, and the
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979.
Richardson made dozens of recommendations for how such a new Act should work, and 203 recommendations in total. [...]
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