Published on the 11/08/2014 | Written by Beverley Head
It’s not often that a subject as arcane as metadata becomes front page news and fodder for radio shock jocks, but this week the federal government delivered metadata’s 15 minutes of fame…
As part of an attempted to crack down on terrorism the Australian Government has signalled its intent to introduce legislation that will oblige internet service providers and telecommunications providers to store metadata which can be later analysed by security agencies.
The legislation has yet to be drafted, and the Government’s initial attempts to explain both its policy and how it would work in practice were confused and inadequate with Government ministers variously saying that ISPs would or would not have to store everything from geolocation to web site data.
A little more light was shed when communications minister Malcolm Turnbull (who was initially sidelined in favour of the prime minister, foreign minister and attorney general who jointly announced the plan) was allowed to enter the debate. Turnbull said that ISPs and telecommunications companies would not be required to maintain a record of users’ web surfing history, but would be expected to hold metadata describing who called who, when, and for how long, also to store the IP address of someone’s phone or computer.
That was backed up by the heads of both ASIO and the Australian Federal Police who were also dragooned into the metadata debate to try to inject some sort of clarity.
The devil however will be in the detail, which will not be known until the legislation is drafted, and presumably, released for comment.
In the meantime the issue has spooked the telecommunications companies and ISPs which would be required to comply with any new legislation.
The extent of the data that might need to be collected and stored was revealed in a submission last month by iiNet to the Senate Standing Committee on legal and constitutional affairs which noted that with a single 14 character tweet there could be as many as 40 fields of metadata.
Reports emerged in the last week that Optus had performed internal costings suggesting that compliance with the proposed regime could cost up to $200 million a year, while iiNet reportedly put a figure of up to $100 million a year on the task as these organisations would have to put in place systems and technology to be able to store the data for the required two year period.
At the end of the day these additional costs seem unlikely to be borne by Government, meaning that consumers will likely foot the bill through increased tariffs.
