[LINK] Data Retention - Canberra, Thu 11 Sep

[Stephen Loosley]

Roger writes,


> This Thursday, 11th September EFA is running a panel session
> on the merits and risks of mandatory data retention and mass
> surveillance more generally.  The panel comprises:  -   Dr Roger 
> Clarke - current Chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation and
> a tireless privacy advocate for over 30 years..  -   Bernard Keane
> ... an outspoken opponent of mandatory data retention ..

Both worthy advocates for we here in the real world ..

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-12/berg-going-against-the-grain-on-data-retention/5664082  (snip)

.. As Bernard Keane has found, the Attorney-General's Department has been pushing for a full version of data retention since at least 2008.

The intellectual genesis of this policy goes back 2006, when the European Union passed the Data Retention Directive.

The directive instructed all EU member states to retain large quantities of communications data - both source and destination - for the investigation of "serious crime". 

European countries did as they were told.

Their experience shows that Tony Abbott was spot on when he said that data retention was designed to fight "general crime", not just terrorism.

In a sample 12-month period, an Austrian review found that the most common law enforcement use of retained data was for cases of theft, followed by drugs, followed by stalking. 

Terrorism didn't rate.

Internet traffic data retained by Poland's scheme is being used "more and more" for civil disputes - even in divorce cases.

The Danish Justice Ministry found only two cases where session logging has been useful in half a decade. Neither concerned terrorism. Denmark gave up data retention in June this year.

Germany's Federal Crime Agency concluded that data retention had no statistically relevant effect on crime or crime clearance. Crime continued its long-term decline even after data retention was abandoned in Germany in  2010.

We could go on. 

Brandis claimed last month that data retention was "the way Western nations are going" but, the opposite is true. 

Data retention is being wound back, repealed, and abandoned. In April this year the European Court of Justice found that the EU directive was unconstitutional.

Australia already has a powerful, robust mechanism to monitor suspects online: targeted data preservation notices on the telecommunications of suspects. 

This regime was updated just two years ago. http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2012A00120

But that, perhaps, is beside the point. This week has demonstrated that the debate over telecommunications surveillance is held in widespread ignorance - ignorance about our existing capabilities, the constantly evolving legal framework, and the architecture of the internet.

Not surprising, of course. This stuff is complicated. Technology policy is hard enough. Add onto that our labyrinth telecommunications intercept laws..

Yet no matter how real the terrorist threat, the pre-emptive surveillance of every single Australian would be an extraordinary policy in every sense of the word - way outside the bounds of proportionality, and way outside the boundaries of legitimate government action in a free country.

--
Cheers,
Stephen