Lefties make a joke of the war on terror

WHILE the risk of domestic terrorism has been dramatically increased, the Greens and some Leftists are still trying to prevent security agencies from accessing their most effective tool against terrorists. That would be the metadata (don’t be frightened by the term) currently held by some but not all communications companies.

The Greens, particularly, have treated accessing metadata as something of a joke dismissing its importance to national security with whimsical questions about its definition in the Senate. Metadata is simply information or data about telecommunications links. It is not defined in the Telecommunications (Interception and ­Access) Act (TIA) but those who work in this area accept that it means information about a communication that does not include the content or substance of that communication. Despite the faux outrage, it has been kept by communications companies virtually since the owners of carrier pigeons kept logs noting the times at which birds were released but not the ­content of the messages they were carrying. Most telephone companies used to record the times and numbers called, and the same sort of information has been routinely kept for internet communications. Now, metadata can include such things as the name and address of a user, a customer’s email address, phone number or Voice-over-Internet-Phone number (VoIP), internet addresses of those communicating with each other and the date, time and duration of a communication as well as the location of the device they’re using. The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) says that currently, inconsistencies in the retention of data across the telecommunications industry mean this critical information is not always available to agencies. The ability to effectively investigate crime, including ­serious and organised groups, is impeded by these inconsistencies. In reality, some communication companies no longer wish to store such data for cost reasons and that’s why the security agencies are anxious to ensure the government amends current legislation to safeguard such material in case it is needed to catch criminals — including terrorists. There is no question that metadata is an effective weapon in the war on crime. The officers who arrested and charged two young Brisbane men last week with ­various offences, including ­recruiting and raising funds for terrorist organisations, were tracked using metadata. Writing in The Australian on Friday, Cameron Stewart detailed how the use of metadata first linked convicted terrorist El Sayed to the 2009 terror plot to launch a suicide attack on Australian soldiers at Sydney’s Holsworthy army base, a plot for which he is now serving an 18-year jail term. But putting terrorism to one side for the moment, police have found access to metadata invaluable in their pursuit of almost every type of serious crime. Unless police and other agencies have the capacity to access metadata rapidly or it is stored as the agencies wish, the cyber record can disappear.To illustrate the urgency, the ACC points to an incident which occurred after a multiple shooting massacre at a school in Finland in which a young man shot and killed 10 people in 2009. Shortly after, a YouTube user posted a video referring to the incident and indicated his intention to conduct a similar attack on a school in NSW. According to the ACC, due to the imminent threat of lives at an Australian school, law enforcement worked with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain the source IP address associated with the YouTube user. Police subsequently discovered the IP address came from an Australian. An IP address is often allocated to one internet user. When that user turns off their internet, the IP address will then be allocated by any telecommunications service provider to another user who connects to the internet. Fortunately this information had not been purged. Under a search and seizure warrant, NSW police were able to access the relevant evidence on the perpetrator’s computer. The ACC stresses that the carriers and carriage service provider in question advised that agencies were lucky to ­obtain the allocated IP address as they were in the process of redesigning their networks and this information will no longer be retrieved or retained. They and other carriers and service providers have indicated that without clear direction from government they will not be retaining allocated IP addresses to user information as well.

In this case a single IP address led to the apprehension, prosecution and conviction of a person who threatened the lives of innocent children. The risk to lives is real and present. The privacy argument was lost when the telephone company issued its first itemised bill.