Tony and Soapy's metadata meddling: Unfair, unwise and unsafe
Abbott and Brandis like to loudly proclaim their
commitment to “freedom of speech”, however their proposals to collect
and probe all Australians metadata is flagrantly and dangerously
contrary to this principle, writes Kieran Cummings.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
~ Benjamin Franklin, Reply to the Governor, 11 Nov 1755
SOME 259 years ago, Benjamin Franklin
wrote these words and they have never been so important to use as
today. With the ability for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to
collect data on ordinary citizens, we must constantly remind ourselves
of the importance of privacy.
In July 2012, the former Labor Government decided to introduce
legislation expanding the capabilities of law enforcement and
intelligence services to allow unfettered collection of data on
Australian citizens. Under the guise of ‘metadata’, then Attorney-General Nicola Roxon
embarked on a brave new world of collection of everything from what
Facebook posts you like through to who you send instant messages to.
This was troubling for many — and none more so than current Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.
At the time (as reported in Delimiter) Turnbull made a speech saying:
“The German Federal Constitutional Court has recently struck down
a similar data retention law noting that “meta-data” may be used to
draw conclusions about not simply the content of the messages, but the
social and political affiliations, personal preferences, inclinations
and weaknesses of the individual concerned,” said Turnbull.
“Leaving aside the central issue of the right to privacy, there
are formidable practical objections. The carriers, including Telstra,
have argued that the cost of complying with a new data retention regime
would be very considerable with the consequence of higher charges for
their customers.”
This damning assessment, unlike much of what Turnbull has said
concerning his portfolio, was right on the money. The cost, both
socially and financially, was too great to even consider introducing
blanket monitoring of citizens.
The concern, as made clear, is that the gathering of metadata may ‒
and almost certainly will ‒ become a tool of political and social
injustice.
With George Brandis spectacularly unable to even define ‘metadata’,
we have to question whether the current Government, like the previous,
actually understands what is involved in metadata gathering.
This is not, as our Prime Minister Tony Abbott claims, only the information on the “front of an envelope”, but rather the front, back, and a large chunk of what is contained within the letter.
This will not just be web history, or even emails, but VOIP (Voice over IP) calls, instant messaging, SMS and even mobile phone calls.
There is no limit to data collection — and this flies in the face of
what most would agree were basic human rights for citizens in a
democracy.
There is no standard against which the term ‘metadata’ is measured.
To me, it’s just a buzzword being bandied about to obfuscate the true
intention — the warrantless surveillance and data collection of all
citizens.
What is stored will be everything from the content type, the origin,
destination, even geolocation data. With many Australians having mobile
devices such as phones and internet connected tablets on their person
almost 24/7, this allows the monitoring of people’s physical location
with no warrant.
So, what are the reasons for these sweeping changes to how our law
enforcement and intelligence services conduct themselves? Well,
apparently, terrorism.
Yep, that old chestnut.
Even though the current systems in place have worked fine in
thwarting even the suggestion of terror attacks, we need expanded powers
to allow every citizen ‒ guilty or not ‒ to be monitored. The
presumption of innocence and due process appear to be secondary to this
Government’s aims and may be willingly and readily jettisoned at any
time.
The problem with this rationale is that there have been no measurable
benefits to massive data collection, as has been shown by the litany of
NSA and CIA whistleblowers. The signal to noise (SNR) ratio of this
data ensures that little to no threats can be picked up — all at the
expense of the privacy of individuals.
Add to this the financial burden of storing two years of data and we have citizens actually paying to be spied on.
Once passed, these laws will only be expanded to gather more data and
suspect more people of crimes they have not committed. The idea of
building a case against a suspect is thrown out the window, with the
general population being assumed guilty, this moving toward fascist
states of the past century.
Instead of focusing on old fashioned police and surveillance work,
the lazy new world of data collection focuses on removing rights to the
point where we are so afraid of our Government we dare not speak out.
That the supposed need for this comes from intelligence services that
lied their way into a war in Iraq points to this being a fundamentally
self-serving policy. That is, if everyone is a terrorist, then there
needs to be ever bigger budgets for agencies like ASIO and ASIS that
monitor the data.
The consequences are a society where opposition to governments,
policies, and corporate interests are treated as crimes, rather than the
robust debate required for a functioning democracy.
Welcome to the Abbott police state.
With the introduction of new laws,
whereby merely travelling to countries where ‘terrorists’ operate
reverses the presumption of innocence and may land people in gaol, the
blanket collection of ‘metadata’ is a worrying prospect. Guilt by
association has been utilised many times in the past to oppress
populations and suppress dissent.
The extent of the damage these laws will do to our society is
unfathomable until after the fact, and once introduced, much like a
parasite, will be difficult to remove.
The suggestion that these laws will not be used to infringe on rights
is laughable, as even without such wide ranging changes to legislation,
law enforcement and intelligence agencies have frequently used the
tools at their disposal to collect data on law-abiding civilians,
including through the use of legal warrants.
This new age of clandestine surveillance ushers in an era of paranoia
that the world has not seen. Championed by neo-liberals, libertarians,
and conservatives, these policies create an environment they espouse to
fight against. The idea of ‘freedom of speech’, so loudly proclaimed by
the same sections of society, is ignored in favour of mass surveillance
and monitoring of the innocent citizens.
The defence is always “if you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide”, yet the legislation is kept away from the public eye as much as possible during the introduction with “trust us” being used to deflect criticism.
Any citizen who trusts a Government so keen to give up their
liberties to form a surveillance state is either naïve or doing a
disservice to democracy.
You can read more by Kieran Cumming at sortius.is-a-geek.com or follow him on Twitter @sortius.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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