Like this: you’re giving away your metadata

WORRIED about how much of your “metadata” our security spy agencies will get their hands on? Well, Facebook, Google and others already have reams.

Facebook’s global head of policy management, Monika Bickert, is in Sydney to give a presentation to the Free Speech Symposium. Picture: James Croucher

WORRIED about how much of your “metadata” our security spy agencies will get their hands on? Well, Facebook, Google and others already have reams of it. And you’re willingly giving it away.

Facebook, for one, receives a trove of metadata — including GPS co-ordinates, IP and mobile phone numbers, and the time, date and place where photos have been taken — whenever users ­access or post information to the site. While the collection of metadata might seem innocuous to the casual observer, new controversial data retention laws being drafted by the government could see the digital footprints of millions of Australian used to assist law enforcement agencies to track down suspected criminals and terrorist targets. And if the laws pass, Facebook could find itself the unwitting peddler of customers’ data to law enforcement agencies.

Under the government’s embryonic data retention proposal, telecoms and internet companies could be forced to store their customers’ metadata for as long as two years to be used by spy agencies and law enforcement bodies to track down criminals and terrorist suspects.

By including social media sites such as Facebook under the remit of the data retention scheme, the government and its security agencies would have access to an even richer treasure trove of data.

Facebook’s global head of policy management, Monika Bickert, said the social media giant would always comply with the laws and enforcement agencies of the jurisdictions in which it operates. “We comply with valid legal process when we receive that from law enforcement,” Dr Bickert, a former US federal criminal prosecutor, told The Australian, speaking ahead of the Human Rights Commission’s Free Speech conference in Sydney today. “We have a whole legal team that is invested in that evolving landscape. But they ensure that where we are required to produce data under applicable laws that we will produce it.”

Facebook’s head of policy, Australia and New Zealand, Mia Garlick, said the company did not want to speculate on the impact of the mooted data retention legislation before a draft was made public, but she did question the need for telecoms and internet service companies to hold on to data for long periods.

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Under Facebook’s present privacy policy, a cache of users’ metadata is retained for 30 days before it is deleted. Metadata stored on back-up servers is deleted within 90 days.

Ms Garlick said Facebook did not retain data for law enforcement purposes unless the company received a valid “preservation request”. Such a request must be made before a user’s data or profile has been deleted.

As a proponent of the open internet and as a voice against intrusive surveillance measures, Facebook has banded with some of the world’s leading technology companies to demand changes to global surveillance laws following the revelations that whistleblower Edward Snowden last year made about the US National Security Agency. Alongside Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter and AOL, the group has published an open letter urging governments to “codify sensible limitations on their ability to compel service providers to disclose user data that balance their need for the data (with) users’ reasonable privacy interests”.

Facebook regularly provides updates on the requests it receives from governments seeking to ­access users’ personal information. In the 12 months from January to December last year, Facebook received 1149 requests from the Australian government and law enforcement agencies. About 65 per cent of those resulted in data being handed over.

Whatever the outcome of the government’s new data retention laws, Dr Bickert said that maintaining the safety and privacy of its users would remain Facebook’s paramount concern. “People are not going to connect and they are not going to share if they do not feel safe,” Dr Bickert said.

As the global head of Facebook’s content policy, Dr Bickert runs an international team that manages the policies and terms of use that govern what is acceptable to post on the site.

Dr Bickert oversees hundreds of staff, including an enforcement team, who proactively engage with the site’s 1.32 billion users around the world to ensure incidences of vilification, abuse, bullying and the promotion of terrorist or violent activity are promptly removed. “We comply with applicable laws but that’s not what drives our policies,” she said. “Our policies are driven by the needs to keep people safe on the site.”