Australia's Privacy Boss Slams Gov't Data-Retention Scheme 82
mask.of.sanity writes "The Australian Government's privacy commissioner has slammed its plans to implement a data retention scheme, in which it would ask telcos and internet providers to store the browsing and calling logs of Australian subscribers. He said the scheme would put user privacy in jeopardy because data will lie around at the behest of law enforcement. The Aussie scheme would be based on that which exists in Europe under the EU Directive. The directive aims to give law enforcement authorities the ability to ascertain the identity of a person using a public network to communicate by mobile, fixed line, email, or internet. The directive defines 'data' to be collected as 'traffic data and location data and the related data necessary to identify the subscriber or user.'"
Just a waste of money (Score:3, Informative)
This dragnet approach is pretty pointless. All it does is cost people time and money.
With the amount of browsing I do I would probably be able to look at my entire history and find illegal things I have accidentally or unintentionally stumbled across over the years, not to mention what kind of traffic I have generated when I have got the odd virus/worm.
It doesn't really protect the community either as anyone who wants to go to the trouble of hiding what they do online can do so very simply so in sense something like this is akin to listening to everyone's phone conversations and not realising the people you are trying to get are sending each other letters.
Australia really needs a Bill of Rights created, and in this day and age of Communications and identity it strongly worded to protect peoples individuals rights online from government, corporate and other individuals.
Third Link (Score:3, Informative)
It's probably important to note that the EU Directive specifically mandates that