Copyright brisbanetimes
Let’s have a look at a few of them. One of the most terrifying is the data-retention legislation introduced by then attorney-general George Brandis in 2015. It compels telecommunications companies to hold on to the metadata of every Australian for at least two years and gives the government extraordinary powers to investigate it, without a warrant. Metadata isn’t the content of communications, it’s the detail of who you communicate with, whether by email, or text, or phone call, where you were and at what time of day, how long the call took. Cross-referencing all of that information, you can create an extraordinarily detailed picture about the activities of an individual. Brandis sold it to us as an essential tool to deal with serious organised crime, people smuggling, drug trafficking, that sort of thing. A few years later, there was an inquiry into the legislation which examined its impact. An organisation called the Australian Telecommunications Alliance, a group of the telcos, counted the number of requests that they got for metadata. How much would you say is a lot of requests in one 12-month period? They found 350,000 requests for metadata in one year. More than 1000 for every working day. And there were all sorts of outrageous requests. One local council used metadata to try to find the owner of a dog that had done a crap on the footpath.
