[AusNOG] metadata conference on SkyNews

[Mark Newton]

On Aug 11, 2014, at 11:10 AM, Peter Tiggerdine <ptiggerdine at gmail.com> wrote:

> What I thought was insightful was that on insiders yesterday Dennis Atkins said that NSA had access to metadata in the US and said it was of very little use to catching any threats homegrown or otherwise.
> 
> So the real question is if the NSA believe it's pointless what credibility does the so called experts from the AFP and ASIO have?
> 
> This to me based on the NSA review begs the question what do you they really want this information for? 

AGD wants it so that there’s plenty of data for the copyright industry to subpoena, and so that the AFP will be able to more easily track down anyone communicating with journalists, such as leakers within the public service or operatives from minor political parties.

The AFP and ASIO are happy to tell all kinds of lies to justify it, because they want unfettered access to everything on general principles.

Atkins is right, to the extent that the data is supposed to be used to catch terrorists. It isn’t. It’s supposed to be used to answer questions like, “We can see that mail server 203.x.y.z relayed email containing an unredacted version of a document that was FOIed last year to a Crikey journalist at 2:35pm last Wednesday. Who sent the message it was relaying?”  

It’s wholesale domestic surveillance of everybody because AGD is scared witless about Snowden emulators.

  - mark