Published on the 04/11/2014 | Written by Beverley Head

Internet service providers will need to store two years’ worth of customer metadata under new legislation introduced to the Parliament last week…

As part of Australia’s heightened approach to national security the Government has introduced the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014.

If passed the legislation would force internet service providers (ISPs) to store, for two years: the identity of the subscriber to a communications service; the source of the communication; the destination of the communication; the date, time and duration of the communication; the type of the communication; and the location of the equipment used in the communication.

The Government has been at pains to explain that it will not require ISPs to keep information about the content of communications or users’ web browsing history.

It claimed that access to “metadata is vital to nearly every counter-terrorism, counter-espionage, cyber-security, organised crime, murder, rape, kidnapping, child sex abuse and child pornography investigation”. However it claimed that ISPs’ current record keeping habits were limiting law enforcement agencies’ ability to interrogate metadata stores.

Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull said that for many ISPs there were no reasons to store metadata for any length of time. Having a mandated two year store of metadata would provide agencies with a better chance of identifying and prosecuting individuals he argued.

This is the latest in a series of legislative changes proposed by the Government which it has branded as critical in order to stem, or prosecute, crime and terrorism offences.

In October the Government passed legislation which substantially extended the warrant provisions available to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) such that searches could extend not just to physical computers, but to networks of computers. As a result broader internet searches will be possible with a single warrant.

ISPs have been promised up to two years to implement the data retention scheme, and Minister Turnbull has confirmed they can expect some form of Government subsidy in order to help shoulder the associated costs although the scale of that subsidy has not been revealed.

He said that this would be examined during an industry consultation process which was ongoing.