[LINK] Schneier: The Internet is a surveillance state

[rene]

On Sun, 17 Mar 2013 14:19:07 GMT, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
[...]
> NYTimes
> EDITORIAL
[...]
> A federal law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, is
> supposed to protect Americans’ phone calls and personal messages from
> being monitored without warrants and subpoenas. But it was written
> for a different era, and offers only partial protection against the
> kind of surveillance that worries privacy advocates today.
>
> For starters, the law provides little or no protection for data about
> **the location of cellphones** and other devices that is not
> considered communications but can be used to identify, connect or
> place individuals.
>
> Google has also said that it has privacy safeguards to ensure that
> the locations of individual wireless users are not disclosed without
> their consent. Those assurances do not go far enough. Congress needs
> to explicitly protect such information from prying eyes. </quote>
>
> It appears that virtually the same may be said about Australia

Best not to ever assume that Australian telecommunications privacy laws are 
anything like the outdated USA "Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 
1986". AU telecommunications laws get updated much more often.

In AU, mobile location information is specifically protected by Part 13 - 
"Protection of Communications" of the Telecommunications Act 1997. That law 
was updated in about 2007, by insertion of s275A
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214/s275a.html
to make explicitly clear and avoid any doubt, that mobile location 
information is information that "relates to the affairs of the customer 
responsible for the handset or device" (i.e. is personal information) and 
is therefore protected by Part 13 of the Act. 

That law applies to telecommunications carriage service providers, and 
insofar as other types of businesses are concerned, mobile location 
information would be "personal information" for the purposes of the Cth 
Privacy Act (and similar State Acts).

Irene