[AusNOG] From the AGD - Data Retention - Starts October 15 2015

[Ross Wheeler]

> But because it was so loosely defined is precisely why it is so 
> important to get involved and interact with the powers that be and make 
> the best of a bad situation.

Arguable, but on balance yes, and that's the primary reason I've been 
leaving it with those who can sit in a room of politicians and not want to 
"go postal".

> Ultimately these decisions get made by people in rooms, and you have to 
> have a voice in that room. The vagueness at least gives people like Paul 
> and George some small leverage to pull things in a direction we in the 
> industry might like.

Still hoping.


> They have been crying out for our feedback for months and clearly 
> struggling to get it.

I've provided what I could back as soon as it was possible to do so.
I haven't recently, because there's been zero, zip, zilch back to address, 
and since I already submitted to them all that I could with what I had, 
there's nothing else to add until there's something else to comment on!

Catch-22.

I believe there is now a significant volume of work, but it's still a 
fscking national secret! They can't tell us any of the details, or offer 
any of the stuff they've worked through - presumably under threat of being 
thrown in gaol for disclosing confidential material.  WTF? Surely, 
regardless of how close it is or isn't, if it's "considered, technical and 
legal interpretation" of the act/nonsense published, it can't be any WORSE 
to the industry than.......  the original useless material?

Even if it's only 90% complete, that's 1000% better than the utterly 
useless crap they put out originally, and it would probably (I expect) 
eliminate 90% of the uninformed speculation (lets face it, that's exactly 
what most of the comments here currently are) - and let us attempt to deal 
with it in a sensible manner.

Seriously, who could reasonably be expected to capture, encrypt, file, 
store.... 2 years+ worth of flow data?

Who seriously thinks the only thing we need to store is the username, IP 
address and timestamp when a user auths?

Somewhere between the two is probably right, but where? And why does the 
agd want to treat us all like idiots, keep us in the dark, and threaten us 
with massive penalties for failing to do what they want (which they won't 
tell us in a way we can achieve)?  (Oh, apart from "because they can"!)


> There's only a few thousand people high up in our industry in Australia, 
> and there's a much smaller number who actually pick up the phone and get 
> involved.

Agreed. But it's been that way for at least the last 15 years.

R.