2 Year Data Retention For Australian ISPs

freddienumber13 writes "Following similar acts passed by foreign governments, the Australian government is now seeking feedback on its plans to bring into law the requirement for ISPs to retain user data for up to 2 years. They're also seeking changes to the law that would allow undercover ASIO agents and its sources to commit crimes which would include, for example, hacking into your computer."

Re:Sincerely hope this doesn't happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda sad the only political party against this is the Greens.

Too many weasels

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are the weasels who think up shit like this ? I'm reasonably certain that if any citizen obtained the communication history of any other, they'd be thrown in jail.

When these moronic wombles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP7CDvQULXw) get the sack, Australia will be a better place.

Re:Fuck you Australia.

[bmo]

>This is US policy by proxy.

That it is, and if it's not direct, it's a wink and a nod, because our politicians can then turn around and tell us here in the states that we need to "harmonise" with our trade partners, and thus things like SOPA and Lamar Smith's recent shenanigans by chopping up SOPA into smaller bits and getting the pieces passed.

It's a gigantic circle jerk with nobody's actual rights, or even opinions, being considered except those of the media companies and the statists.

Just wait for Romney to be elected. The fix is in.

--
BMO

Re:Only 2 years ?

[thed8]

I think 2 years means it will all be gone by the time anyone wants to look, so if you really want the data then something like 10 years is needed along with a mandated retention system. Every litigation I've been involved in has lost data even when a company had a 7 year retention policy. Not through any malicious erasures but through hardware or software failures. One even had a printout but it was no longer legible. Do the Management and IT guys go to jail because a hardware device failed after 1 year 11 months? Or 6 years and 11 months? Or because they can't find it and the people who were responsible then are long gone? Don't get me wrong I think it is a mistake to require the retention, but if you are going to require it, then do it right. If Australia really wants the data they better say forever and they better decide on a highly reliable storage system and require that as well IMHO.

What could possibly go wrong?

[GiantRobotMonster]

Pretty useful for nefarious purposes to have access to the last two years of somebody's traffic...
Identity theft will be impossible to guard against.
The ISPs responsible for storing all this data, need to do it at the lowest possible cost. That always works out well....

The best bit will be the assumption that all this data collected from the ISP couldn't possibly be wrong, incomplete, or misleading.
Framing people for child pornography, murder, terrorism, sedition, etc, will become really really easy -- gain access to someone's LAN, and you can paint a big red X on them that lasts two years!

Aside from coming up with a better system of government that won't use Orwell as a how-to guide, we need to massively ramp up the level of cryptographic protection considered acceptable -- a million orders of magnitude ought to slow the bastards up for a while....