Greens unveil plan to require warrant to access phone and internet records

Annual report suggests law enforcement agencies accessed citizens' 'metadata' 293,501 times in last year
Typing on the keyboard of a PC
Agencies can access metadata after simply filling in a form. Photograph: RunPhoto/Getty Images

The Greens will try to force government agencies to get a warrant before they can access Australians’ phone and internet records – something law enforcers did almost 300,000 times in the last financial year after simply filling out a form.

As international anger mounts at revelations by the Guardian that US security agencies have been secretly gathering digital information on non-US citizens, Greens senator Scott Ludlam will next week introduce the telecommunications interception and access act (get a warrant) bill 2013 to impose stricter conditions on Australian law enforcement agencies accessing private telecommunications data and internet logs.


There is no judicial oversight or requirement that law enforcers prove a suspicion of a crime being committed in order to get permission to access metadata and in 2011-12 it was accessed 293,501 times according to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act annual report.

The report shows metadata access was granted to state and federal police forces, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the RSPCA, a long list of federal government departments – including the tax office and the departments of foreign affairs and trade, defence, health and ageing, immigration and environment as well as state government departments responsible for commerce, the environment and primary industries. Metadata access was also approved for the Victorian taxi directorate.

Ludlam wants to amend the Telecommunications Interception Act so that law enforcement agencies accessing metadata are required to get a warrant under the same conditions as are imposed if they want to read emails or stored internet data: that there is suspicion of an offence potentially punishable by at least three years in jail.

Law enforcement agencies argue that accessing metadata is less intrusive than tapping phones or reading emails and that their information gathering has to keep pace with modern technology.

Ludlam points to this real-time map put together by a Green party politician in Germany about his own life to show how much information can be gained from metadata alone.

Ludlam’s attempt at amending the act is unlikely to be considered in the logjam of legislation before the parliament which has only two sitting weeks before the 14 September federal election.

It comes as a plan by the the Gillard government to force Australian telecommunications companies to store metadata for two years to assist law enforcers appears also unlikely to make it to a vote.

A joint parliamentary inquiry into controversial proposed national security changes – including ensuring that telcos, internet service providers and sites such as Facebook be legally required to collect metadata from users and store it for two years – will be tabled within weeks.

But the laws, which the government said were designed so that security agencies could keep up with the rapidly changing nature of communications, are well down the list of legislative priorities.

The shadow attorney general, George Brandis, has promised a coalition government would “examine them carefully”.

He has expressed concerns about how metadata and content can be separated by online providers.

He said: “The public would accept a level of mandatory data retention in relation to telecommunications. They would accept the logic of a regime being technology-neutral and reaching the internet, but my political judgment is that there is no way the public wouldn't react very strongly against a proposal unless they were absolutely guaranteed that their internet browsing history or use would not be subject of the mandatory retention regime.''

Both the opposition communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, and Ludlam have expressed strong concerns at revelations that the US National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the data of non-US users of Google, Facebook, Apple and other internet companies.

Ludlam says he will be asking questions about whether Australian security agencies are given access to information about Australians obtained by the US in this way.

Last week Turnbull said “Australians would be very troubled” by the allegation in the Guardian and other publications that the US National Security Agency was engaged in large-scale, covert surveillance of private data belonging to non-US citizens held by American companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Youtube.”

The Australian government is refusing to comment on “national security and intelligence capabilities”, even though world leaders, including the German chancellor Angela Merkel, have said they will be asking the US government about the revelations.

Some recent reports have quoted Australian federal police evidence to Senate estimates which said the AFP had made 43,362 requests for metadata. This is a small subset of the total number of requests by all police departments, government departments and agencies, on the public record in the TIA annual report.