Data-retention plan like ‘punching at a cloud’

5 Sep 2012, 2:05 pm   -   Source: Andy Park, SBS
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"Data-retention is data-sovereignty" says one IT expert on the Attorney General's proposal to retain browsing data for two years.

Your internet browsing data could be kept on file for two years in proposed changes supported by the Attorney General, but privacy groups and IT experts say the plan is "full of holes".

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The Federal Government’s plan to effectively reverse existing privacy legislation by endorsing a two year data-retention policy for internet service providers has been called “Gestapo” tactics by one Liberal MP.

Yesterday, Attorney General Nicola Roxon told a Security in Government conference that the “proposed reform is to allow law enforcement agencies to continue investigating crime in light of new technologies.”

The statement moves away from Ms Roxon’s previous statement about the plan and has met with opposition from privacy groups and the IT sector.

They fear that the plan does not address the need for extended powers, will effect e-business and will expose civilian data to risk.

Making a submission at today’s conference on behalf of Blue Print for Free Speech, Simon Wolfe said the Attorney General’s proposed reforms were “vague” and likened them to “punching at a cloud”.

“The onus should be on those proposing the reforms to justify what they should be,” he said.

“They are talking about the merits of increased powers without actually talking about why they are needed in the first place.”

Mr Wolf’s submission also said the plan imposes unreasonable costs, requiring private providers to carry out public surveillance, a sentiment echoed by others in the technology sector.

Pete Cooper is co-founder of Fishburners, the largest collective of tech start-ups in Australia.

He says that the government’s data-retention plan will be a hurdle for international businesses looking to invest here.

“There is a mini boom going on in the data centres at the moment,” he said.

“The one selling point Australia has going for it is a perception of quality and force of law – one tiny security breach would have a dire effect on that perception.”

“There are thousands of layers to this thing and it’s full of holes – none of them good and none of them good for commerce.”

But despite fears about costs, some companies will benefit from the plan -- the data-retention industry, as with the data-mining industry, is a multi-billion dollar sector.

Rob Livingstone is a UTS fellow and an information technology expert who says private industry is set to gain – with potential risks to the privacy of Australian citizens.

“The government puts out a tender for the storage of so many exabytes of data, then private markets rub their hands with glee trying to get their hands of that pot of gold,”

“If you get Australian data from citizens in an Australian jurisdiction and you sign a contract to an Australian data host to provide it, and three months after the contract is signed they [could] get bought out by a Chinese or American firm.

“The government cannot mandate that you will always be an Australian-owned company."

Mr Livingston is also concerned about the security of systems the Government would put in place for data-retention.

“Data-retention is data-sovereignty,” he said.

“The data is resident in a data centre somewhere. That data is very portable; it could be striped across multiple data centres for redundancy and availability purposes.”

In the rapidly changing data industry, Mr Livingstone says the ultimate destination of Australians’ data could be far away from where the government intends.

Also, sophisticated crime syndicates or terrorist groups, the intended targets of the government plan, are already using advanced ISP masking and protocols that circumvent the proposed measures, he said.

“It’s fine for politicians to get up and make grand statements but the potential complexity of this thing in application and practicalities needs to be serious considered,” he said.

Speaking from today’s conference, Mr Wolfe said his biggest concern about the proposed changes was the privacy of individuals.

“Our objection is that they unreasonably interfere with people’s privacy, they have a chilling effect on freedom of expression,” he said.

Privacy , Andy Park SBS

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Your Comments

Innocent until proven guilty?

Strider - from Brisbane, 7 months ago

I agree strongly with you Paul's comments. This will not only mean increased costs to our already unreasonably high costs we pay to ISP's as the ISP's certainly aren't going to shoulder the federal government's 700 million dollar plan. This also works against Australian law that we are "innocent until proven guilty." As this law assumes all are "guilty until proven innocent" by tracking all our data.

Mr

Marx - from Australia, 9 months ago

The governments want to know who potentially could be an enemy of the state.This is why they are trying to monitor and track browsing records.If anybody wants to potentially commit serious crime then they would be smart if they stayed away from all technology devices .

1984

Berengere - from Coogee, 9 months ago

After the child pornography excuse now the terror excuse... What's next? We might be in 2012, but our so called "developed" governments are still in 1984... Fighting everyday harder to get their big brother state right... Shame!

Beating a dead horse

Paul - from Sydney, 9 months ago

Australia's internet standards are already third world. Imposing mandatory rules like this will only cause ISPs to pass costs on to the consumer, digging the grave of our information infrastructure even deeper. Not only that, our government has already encroached on our rights enough as it is, and that's because Australians as a whole do not stand up and fight against idiocy like this. I do not want to live in a nanny state and my kids won't want to either. Fight it or we all lose in the end.

Security? What security?

Rolly - from Perth, 9 months ago

Any reference to secure internet storage is akin to pronouncing the "Titanic" unsinkable. Wise people treat transferring information on the internet in a similar vein to posting picture postcards via surface mail. It can be accessed by any one with enough skill and determination, as Wikileaks and many others have successfully demonstrated. But then wisdom is hardly a feature of governments anywhere as shown by their continued use of electronic technology to handle sensitive documents.

Proposal suggests system has already failed

Caleb - from Bayswater, 9 months ago

Even needing to hold the data for merely three months suggests that the people and mechanisms in place to deal with and investigate legally suspicious events and entities have already failed before they've even started. Technology nowadays has already progressed to the point that if you haven't finished your investigation within 72 hours of the event taking place, the information required to conduct the investigation will already be outdated and redundant. Authorities need to up their game.

not only data

p2p - from perth, 9 months ago

i belive that 2 weeks ago it was past by the snete that data retention for 3 months was past anyway for law enforcments it is not only terrorists and criminals they want but also anyone that uses p2p and downloads things for themselves on a request from a party from overseas the afp will then submit a request to an isp from there they get the warrent and hand over all the details to the party so out goes your privacy!

Cannot keep private now

C - from Adelaide, 9 months ago

For reasons of personal security, I made a confidential submission to the Inquiry - only to find that it was put up on the website. (It has since been blocked at my request.) If they cannot get that right how can they hope to keep any private information private?

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