Key Details on the Australian Meta-Data Retention Law

[frogboy]

Thanks to the new metadata retention laws passed by the Australian government, every phone call you make, text message you send, and email you write will be tracked by agencies.



These laws are allegedly implemented to protect Australia and Aussies against organized crime and terrorism. However, even if these laws actually help the country in its fight against terrorism, it is still considered as a major invasion of Australian users' privacy.



What is Metadata?

Metadata is actually a trail of digital breadcrumbs you leave behind on the web. Any information that explains your activities on the web is classified as your metadata. This includes your browsing history, people you've contacted on mail, or messages you've sent to other people.



So if you send an email to a client, the government cannot identify what was written in it, but they will know to whom you sent this email, at what time, and at what date.





What is being collected, and how does it affect your digital privacy?

Though it's not known how and in what way this data will be used by authorities, one thing has been communicated clearly: internet and mobile service providers will be required to hold onto your metadata for at least two years.

Full Article. Key Details on the Australian Meta-Data Retention Law

Your metadata will be collected by authorities, which includes your call data, browsing history and messaging details. It includes nearly everything you do on the internet, including whether you visited sites to download movies, or any other content, illegally or legally, plus loads more.



It might seem like it doesn’t give much away, but believe me, it’s very easy to piece together clues and recreate your digital life, and allowing a stranger to have access to it. The law is also costly than most people imagine it to be.

 

[Winter Soldier]

Thanks for sharing @frogboy, very useful info.
What can I say, yeah the goal is important, but the price is the privacy of everyone.

 

[Andytay70]

Privacy is a thing of the past!
Here in the UK we all moan and ask why nothing was done when terrorism strikes, but when they "snoop" on our messages and calls whilst fighting terrorism we still moan!!!

 

[In2an3_PpG]

Privacy seems like a lost cause anymore.

One country after another seem to be gathering more and more about you for their homeland security and there is quite honestly nothing to do about it but give them as little as possible in return.

 

[lab34]

Hello,
Next week-end, Emmanuel Macron will be the president of France.
Techcrunch, one month ago:
French presidential candidate Macron talks tough on tech firms over terrorism

“Governments, as long as they are democratic, should be able to access terrorist content on social networks and instant messaging services. We need to figure out the terms and the safeguards. But the goal is clear. If I’m elected, I’ll undertake this at the very beginning of my five-year mandate at the European level and within NATO,”
[...]
In a written update following the counterterrorism strategy launch, Macron’s campaign and policy team have emphasized that it is not his intention to undermine encryption or outlaw the use of end-to-end encryption, rather — in the case of the latter technology — the suggestion is that metadata is what Macron wants companies to hand over.

 

[Myriad]

My deepest sympathies go out to all Australian people .

They will now have to live with constant unwarranted intrusion into their personal lives ,
contrary to Article 12 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights , and for no intelligent reason whatsoever.

I challenge anyone to show me one single academic study that demonstrates that mass surveillance reduces
terrorist attacks or cyber-crime ( if anything they tend to demonstrate the opposite ).
This goes back at least as far as the Stasi in the former East Germany , and probably much further .
It is always the weak , the vulnerable , the innocent and the simply misguided who suffer most under such regimes .

Once again it is meta-data that seems to be much more important than actual content , and this is clear from Snowden
and other insider whistle-blowers who describe how their time was spent within the TLAs , the tools they used ,
and what those tools did .

 

[McLovin]

It's a whole load of crap if you ask me. Yes it might help the government stop terrorism but it means that the ISP's will be able to access it whenever they can. Now basically if you were to hack an ISP that's the end of Australia. There are two/three big ISP companies in Australia, one being Telstra, second Optus, and third which is run by the government is the NBN. Now I don't personally have a problem with them keeping the data as I've got nothing to hide on the web but it might be hard for business. They want to keep their data secret but somewhat can't because the government is watching them at all times...

 

[JohnBRogers]

I'm so sorry that my homeland has passed this law...
Even though I don't live there for years now I hate to see the country is going this way.
Constant surveillance can't help fight anything, plus, Australia is not even close as threatened as US or UK.
Condolences my fellow Aussies.