From News.com.au comes confirmation that Australia’s controversial data retention (‘metadata’) laws will come into effect on Tuesday, despite nobody knowing the full costs involved in the scheme:
The October 13 start of the Mandatory Data Retention Regime will involve details of our telephone and internet messages being stored by service providers for two years.
The captured communication material will cover who sent a message, who received it, when, where and how. But the contents of the message will not be retained.
It will mean storage of the telephone numbers of people making and receiving calls and how long they talked but not the contents of their conversation.
Similarly, internet addresses and times will be kept but not the messages themselves.
Under defined circumstances, police and national security authorities will have access to the retained material…
The Government is expected to provide about $128 million, plus $3 million for administrative costs, to help telephone and internet service providers set up retention and storage systems, but the final bill is expected to be higher.
Any extra cost would be passed on to consumers, particularly from smaller providers.
Internet Australia, the not-for-profit peak organisation representing all Australian internet users, has already warned that small internet service providers (ISPs) face a “very real prospect of ISPs going out of business” if they are not adequately reimbursed for the costs of implementing and complying with the Coalition’s data retention scheme.
As part of this year’s Federal Budget, $131 million was set aside to help fund the costs of creating and maintaining systems to store all Australians’ telecommunications data. However, that amount is expected to cover only between one-third and one-half of the actual estimated cost.
Accordingly, consumers will be forced to pay one way or another for data retention, either through higher internet costs or via their taxes.
It is also worth pointing out that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is not a fan of data retention. When he was shadow communications minister in 2012, he noted “grave misgivings” on data retention, which he felt “seems to be heading in precisely the wrong direction” and would be easy to evade by criminals.
I share similar views and believe data retention would unnecessarily impede upon users’ freedom, it would be overly expensive to set-up and administer, and would be largely ineffective.
On the last point, any terrorist seeking to circumvent to regime could easily use a public Wi-Fi hotspot to coordinate their activities. Alternatively, anyone with even a basic understanding of the internet can set-up a “virtual private network” (VPN) in about 20 minutes, thereby evading the metadata net.
In short, data retention is a complete waste of time and money, and an unnecessary infringement on people’s freedom. All it will do is force-up everyone’s internet costs or taxes and reduce civil liberties, while the intended perpetrators continue on their merry way.
unconventionaleconomist@hotmail.com
