Metadata debate about trust, not privacy

Gadgets on the go

Adam Turner is an award-winning Australian freelance technology journalist with a passion for gadgets and the "digital lounge room".

The real fear is not what they want to know about us, but whether we can trust them.

It's difficult to find a middle ground in the metadata debate when the government seems hell-bent on giving the feds whatever they want and civil libertarians are hell-bent on stopping them. The way forward lies somewhere in the middle, but rational debate is likely to be lost in the shouting.

It's naive to think that there aren't legitimate threats to Australia which justify granting law enforcement and security agencies some form of access to metadata records from telcos and ISPs.

Don't forget that only weeks ago a plot was foiled to kidnap a random person from Sydney's Martin Place and film their public beheading. It's difficult to oppose increased surveillance powers when you stop to think that it could have been the decapitated body of someone you love lying in the street. That's not scaremongering, it really could have been any one of us – at which point people would have blamed the government for not doing enough.

The fact that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have managed to foil such plots under the current metadata regime doesn't mean that the proposed changes are unnecessary.

The crux of the AFP and ASIO's argument is that some telcos currently retain metadata on an ad-hoc basis but they want to standardise practices across the industry, to make sure investigations aren't thwarted by the fact that some telcos throw away metadata sooner than others. They insist they're not asking for anything new, just stricter enforcement of what already happens.

The metadata legislation does not propose keeping a list of every website you visit, although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise when some politicians clearly don't understand this and have done an appalling job of explaining it.

Instead the metadata regime wants to keep track of the IP address allocated to your house or mobile device, because for most people this changes regularly. This way investigators can trace suspicious activity back to the account holder.

When you look at it this way, the proposed metadata laws seem quite reasonable. Some people will play the "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about" card, but it's not that simple.

The problem is that some politicians clearly don't comprehend the powers that they're granting intelligence agencies, and they're leaving definition's disturbingly vague. Abbott and Brandis' painful attempts at explaining metadata don't fill me with confidence that they really understand what they're dealing with, or that they even really care about pesky ideas like civil liberties. As usual, Turnbull is more articulate than the rest of them combined – but when he was in opposition he also expressed fears over an expanded metadata retention regime.

Meanwhile intelligence agencies in Australia and around the world have a disturbing habit of overstepping the bounds. Today they're asking for the power to trawl through two years worth of everyone's metadata – without a search warrant – in search of evil plots. It's a slippery slope and the hunt for terrorists can easily become the hunt for whistleblowers or anyone else who offends the government of the day.

Other interested parties are already circling, like the copyright lobby keen to crack down on illegal downloading. The AFP has already indicated that metadata could be used to assist with the pursuit of pirates – although the movie houses would need a warrant. It's hard to see why there's interest in tracking how much we download each month unless it's to catch people grabbing movies from BitTorrent.

The proposed metadata laws take on an even more sinister tone when you consider them in the context of the Trans Pacific Partnership, where the government is happily signing away our rights behind closed doors.

In the past a disturbing range of government agencies have had access to metadata. The fact that the new legislation proposes tightening this up is an encouraging sign – limiting who can access metadata without a warrant and what they can do with it. The Commonwealth Ombudsman will also have new powers to inspect the records of enforcement agencies to ensure they're complying with the law. Of course this is only comforting if you trust the government and its secretive agencies to play by the rules.

After dropping the metadata bombshell yesterday the government decided to put the decision on hold until next year so it can be examined by a bipartisan joint parliamentary committee. It's hard to believe that this wasn't always the plan and that the situation was stage managed to make it look like the government was responding to people's concerns.

It's also hard to believe that a joint parliamentary committee will make much of a difference when the Federal opposition blindly passed new security legislation recently and then turned around to question whether it was a bad idea. It's difficult to have faith in an opposition which doesn't oppose things until it's too late.

The real issue with metadata isn't privacy, it's the potential for governments and secretive intelligence agencies to abuse their power. Once your right to privacy is eroded, it's easier to chip away at other rights – with few safeguards except a "trust me" from politicians who don't even understand what they're signing away.

Even if you've got nothing to hide, you should be concerned about the slippery slope that metadata retention puts us on.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/digital-life/computers/gadgets-on-the-go/metadata-debate-about-trust-not-privacy-20141031-11es9a.html