So the bill has passed, opposed by everyone but the two major parties. Oh well, it's not all bad, as at least it was nice to see Libs and Labs finally cooperate on something, anything, and I'm sure they know what's best for us! Now, I don't want my metadata, or anything tracked by the government, and perhaps there are others in here who feel the same way. Senator Ian McDonald said that if you have nothing to hide then you having nothing to worry about, but I would urge him to go to Brandis' bookshelves and look for a book on the 20th history of Europe to see if that changes his mind.
There are many overlapping questions here ... Exactly what is being stored? Who stores the metadata where? How is the data protected? Who can access it? How much will it cost the end users? I learned in a radio interview this week that metadata for offshore webmail accounts like Gmail and Hotmail cannot be retained by Australian ISPs (I hope this is true). I presume that Australian officials will have to jump through unchanged hoops to request information about such accounts and activity, and I hope these hoops are reasonably narrow. I'm not sure if they're planning to retain web browsing data, does anyone know? If so, rumours have it that using a foreign VPN is the easiest way around this. If so again, is it not too much of a burden to setup and run? I reckon it would be cheaper if the Australian government just paid for a live data fed from Facebook and Google, as they already know more about us than the NSA. TGIF, Greg
