We’re all caught up in the drama of metadata

METADATA laws being proposed by the government would simply mandate that telcos keep the metadata, which most already do voluntarily.

Artwork: John Tiedemann

EVERY time you search something on the internet it’s a sure bet someone or something is watching. It is no coincidence that mysterious ads for products you might have been browsing may turn up in your email some time later.

Anyone who is wired to the world through a computer or a handset unknowingly contributes to a digital profile every time they log on.

That profile will contain not only the metadata that records when and where and who you have communicated with, whether it by traditional methods such as a phone, or via the internet, it also captures what you are looking at, generally speaking, and for how long and how often.

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None of this should come as a surprise to anyone with a basic understanding of the digital age.

What may surprise people however, considering the hysteria this week about the federal government’s plans for a mandated metadata retention system, is that all this information — your digital profile — is collated and kept not by spooks in the shadows but by people like Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt.

Google, Facebook, Telstra, Optus, etc — all these companies build profiles of customers and subscribers from your digital footprint. And they retain it for a single purpose — to make money.

What also may come as a shock to those who have already subscribed to the Big Brother scare campaign over metadata retention is that our state and federal police forces, counterterrorism and spy agencies such as ASIO or the Australian Signals Directorate, actually don’t have access to all this information.

Artwork: John Tiedemann

As of today, all they have access to without a warrant is the metadata of an individual or organisation. And for that they still need to seek authorisation. To look at what is described as content, which would be what it is you have been talking, texting or emailing about, or what you are actually looking at on a web page, requires a warrant.

Police and intelligence agencies have been able to access metadata for years, pretty much since phone companies have been selling phones. It is not just a useful tool for policing and intelligence gathering against suspected criminals or terrorists it has become a crucial element of investigation.

A recent example of the use of metadata was the murder of Jill Meagher. Police used metadata capture to place the criminal at the scene.

Operation Pendennis, which snared the terrorist cells in Sydney and Melbourne a decade ago, would not have been possible without access to mountains of metadata.

The laws being proposed by the government would simply mandate that telcos keep the metadata — which most already do voluntarily and for a lot longer than the two years the agencies are asking for. For example, Telstra keeps this stuff for up to seven years for its own commercial purposes.

The reason for the urgency is that law enforcement agencies fear many telcos are moving, or will move in the future, away from storing this basic metadata as they move toward billing protocols based on data volume rather than single billed calls. It no longer becomes of use to them.

In a nutshell, all the government is seeking to do is make mandatory what telcos already do voluntarily. It does not involve any expanded powers for these agencies.

The underlying principle of this issue is ASIO or the AFP or whoever else can access metadata — which also includes the RSPCA — are not seeking, nor will they be granted, expanded powers of surveillance under a mandatory data retention system.

They will still have less access to your stuff than Google or Facebook, unless they obtain a warrant. But importantly, and unlike Google and Facebook or the telcos, they have to operate under an oversight regime including the parliament, an inspector- general of intelligence, a legislative monitor and a standing joint committee.

The government may have completely buggered up its attempts to explain the issue this week but an equally disingenuous campaign is now being run by Labor leader Bill Shorten and shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus.

Chapter 5 of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security tabled in June last year runs to 192 pages.

It is entirely devoted to data retention, which was first flagged by Labor attorney-general Nicola Roxon in 2012, and took thousands of submissions, including from telcos.

It was a bipartisan and unanimous report. Current Attorney-General George Brandis was a member of that committee. And Dreyfus was attorney-general at the time it was tabled.

The opposition’s claim that the committee failed to recommend in favour of data retention is dishonest characterisation.

None of what is being proposed by the government is new. What is new, however, is the unravelling of what was previously a bipartisan approach to the issue.

People are not being asked to consider new powers for spies to look at their stuff.

They are simply being asked whether Australian counterterrorism and intelligence agencies should be allowed to continue doing what they are already doing in the face of a seriously heightened risk of terrorism.

ABBOTT’S REALITY CLARITY MOMENT

THERE are two ways of looking at Tony Abbott’s decision this week to drop — forever — the proposed reforms to Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

It was always going to be portrayed as a backdown. He knew that and was prepared to wear it, despite the irony that he would be ridiculed for his backdown from the very people who have been criticising him for not backing down.

And the reason he was prepared to wear it is because there is now a realisation at senior levels that with a year down, and two to go, that if things don’t start improving for this government soon, they could be in real trouble.

Abbott is endlessly stubborn and some of his colleagues accuse of him of an often irrational fixation with things completely detached from the main political game — such as the Paid Parental Leave Scheme.

But there comes a point when policy purity as a political virtue must give way a more brutally pragmatic approach to the political realities.

The longer an opposition can stay at 54 per cent on a two PP vote, the shorter becomes the time within which it will become the government. And there isn’t much sign yet that the numbers are turning around in any significant fashion for Abbott or the government.

A senior Coalition source said Abbott was now starting to accept there are problems ahead and described his decision to ditch 18C as his John Howard moment. Howard carefully balanced the competing forces of conviction politics with populism and political expediency.

The 18C decision was Abbott’s recognition that 18C was cargo that needed to be thrown overboard to steady the ship ahead the storm.

It was a significant shift for Abbott, who rarely gives up a fight, and one that several Cabinet colleagues said had released a pressure valve in Cabinet. It was also a sign that Abbott’s new thinking will inevitably lead him to jettison the PPL.