Police may not be able to make use of metadata collected at wireless hotspots even with data retention laws, NSW Police Superintendent Commander Arthur Kopsias says.
Appearing before a parliamentary inquiry into the government's proposed new data retention laws, Superintendent Commander Kopsias said legislation would not go “all the way” to helping police make use of metadata from internet cafes.
Encryption poses an issue for authorities, he said.
“I’m waiting for the day when we’ll have some legislation in place where encryption won’t be a huge problem for us,” he said.
“It is a huge problem for us.”
Superintendent Commander Kopsias said intercepting information was once much easier.
“The advent of the internet has actually degraded our detection capability,” he said.
“… I’m not saying they’re bad for the global community. For us it makes it harder to keep abreast.”
‘We thrive on data, it is intelligence’
The police representatives at the joint committee hearing said the data retention laws would make accessing the data more standardised, as opposed to the different holding periods of different carriers like Optus and Telstra.
NSW Police representatives said there were about 1000 commissioned officers who can currently request “the boss” to ask telcos for data.
The process was documented and transparent, they said.
“We thrive on data, it is intelligence,” Superintendent Commander Kopsias said.
Another officer, Inspector Gavin Segrave from Victoria, said that intelligence was targeted and did not resemble trawling through data like police were on a fishing expedition.
The hearings also heard concerns from police and intelligence agencies that telcos were deleting valuable metadata, sometimes within weeks of it being generated, which could jeopardise investigations.
‘I think they're not choosing to destroy it’
However the hearings had also heard from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, who said authorities such as ASIO should not be allowed to store telecommunications data indefinitely.
Vivienne Thom said there were provisions that required ASIO to destroy non-relevant data within five years.
But she's not sure whether ASIO is complying with the requirements.
"I'm not sure that they're choosing to retain it. I think they're not choosing to destroy it," she said.
"… The balance between security and privacy in my view requires that this information should not be retained indefinitely.
"I think that the general public would expect that material that is found not to be relevant to security would be deleted after a period of time."
The hearings also heard from the Law Council, whose representatives said that the federal government should go back to the drawing board on its proposed data retention laws.
With AAP.
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