[AusNOG] PJCIS report on data retention bill has been posted

[Mark Newton]

The people who have written the data retention legislation, the bureaucrats at AGD, don't care about silly notions like cost benefit analyses, so there isn't one and won't be one.

The reason they want it is to enable them to answer questions like, "Laurie Oakes received a 13 page PDF on October 13 2014, who sent it to him?" It's always been an anti-whistleblower measure, ASIO's and ASD's way of preventing another Snowden.

The other justifications (terrorism, pedophilia, corporate crime, hate speech, etc) have been made up by politicians, and are irrelevant because politicians are out of the loop on this issue. This is an AGD initiative, it's coming from the bureaucracy, not the government, and Ministers are nothing more than well trained bit players, tools used as a means to an end by the departmental mandarins.

This law will go on to be used in harmful ways its drafters never intended (in the same way that the DMCA has been used to restrict third party coffee pods and garage door openers). The policy's proponents don't care, and won't try to mitigate any of the harm. It's going to be a disaster.

   - mark

--
Tiny screen, imaginary keyboard.


> On 27 Feb 2015, at 18:42, Paul Wilkins <paulwilkins369 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The Government is resuming debate on this Bill on Tuesday. Do you think they’re going to spend the weekend assembling a package of amendments to give effect to PJCIS’s recommendations, when they already have what they want?
> 
> To be honest, I wish I knew what they want. There never has been a set of requirements for the legislation, or any cost benefit analysis. The best one can do is guess as to the objectives:
> 
>  - state security, anti terrorism, anti organised crime
> These are serious players, and won't be caught from metadata. The crazies who have committed attrocities were already known to authorities, so it's not clear where data retention helps.
> 
>  - pedophiles
> Data retention may catch marginally more pedophiles than current policing efforts. But it won't justify the expense of data retention.
> 
>  - illegal downloaders
> Data retention is going to mean downloaders move to encryption. So ironically, complicating the efforts of the security agencies.
> 
>  - policing antisocial behaviour on the internet - harassment, hate speech, revenge pornography
> Here data retention will actually work, and allow identification of people using the internet to be anti social. This may even be the actual purpose of the legislation, which the government (and police forces) are reluctant to admit, given that it gives the police considerable powers to impinge on free speech. In a properly functioning society, it's not the police that determine the limits of free speech. Certainly the public would be surprised to learn the government plans to have consumers spend some  $600M in infrastructure to police speech on the internet. If this is the real intent, hardly surprising no one is saying so.
> 
> Otherwise, I really have no idea what they hope to achieve with this legislation. It will be expensive and will deliver scant benefits, and ironically will undermine national security.
> 
> Paul Wilkins
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On 27 February 2015 at 18:16, Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org> wrote:
>> On 27 Feb 2015, at 5:44 pm, Paul Wilkins <paulwilkins369 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > Terms of Reference
>> > The section 'Terms of Reference' makes no mention of scope. So perhaps the PJCIS is of the view they can make whatsoever recommendations they see fit. But it is a mistake to consider the PJCIS has carte blanche, where their May 2013 Terms of Reference limit enquiry to the following:
>> 
>> PJCIS has the opposite of carte blanche. The government of the day can (and likely will) ignore everything they say. It does not matter what the recommendations say, or even if any specific recommendation counts as a “major concession,” if it’s never enacted into law.
>> 
>> The Government is resuming debate on this Bill on Tuesday. Do you think they’re going to spend the weekend assembling a package of amendments to give effect to PJCIS’s recommendations, when they already have what they want?
>> 
>> 
>>   - mark
> 
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