SYDNEY: Australia’s Privacy Commissioner has questioned whether phone and internet providers should be required to store customer metadata for as long as two years.
Timothy Pilgrim told an inquiry into the federal government’s data retention bill on Thursday that law enforcement agencies seeking to access such information would typically do so within six to 12 months.
The controversial legislation would require telecommunications providers to store customers’ metadata for two years for security agencies to access without a warrant. Metadata includes phone numbers, length of phone calls, email addresses used and start and finish times of internet sessions.
Mr Pilgrim told a parliamentary joint committee on security and intelligence should “establish whether it’s necessary to retain for two years, or whether a shorter period would meet the needs” of security services.
While he could see a role for the new laws, Mr Pilgrim said “the case for a two-year data retention scheme is less clear”.
He said “a year should be sufficient”.
Mr Pilgrim said the proposed laws should be amended to ensure that any providers were subject to the laws of the Privacy Act and to give the commissioner oversight to ensure agencies complied.
In line with his submission to the inquiry, Mr Pilgrim added that there should be a requirement for service providers to notify the Privacy Commissioner and the individuals affected if there was a data breach.
Mr Pilgrim also reiterated concerns he made in his submission to the inquiry that the scheme could result in more information on individuals being retained than was anticipated or necessary.
He said that alone should be enough for the government to guarantee it would conduct regular reviews of any laws it put in place.
Not for the first time when it comes to the data retention bill, a government MP demonstrated difficulty grasping technology in the hearing.
This time it was government whip and committee member Philip Ruddock, who prompted an outburst on social media for asking about the telecommunications application Skype.
“Skype. That’s a telephone you use on a computer?” he said.
When outlining the govenment’s controversial data retention plans in August last year, Attorney-General George Brandis struggled to explain what metadata was, and what information would be retained under the proposed laws.
Earlier in Thursday’s hearing, Australia’s inspector general of intelligence and security Vivienne Thom aired her concerns that ASIO could indefinitely store information on individuals who had been discounted as a security threat.
Dr Thom she was concerned ASIO was not destroying information it had collected on individuals but not used as part of an investigation.
“I’m not sure they’re choosing to retain it, [rather] they’re not choosing to destroy it,” she said.
Dr Thom speculated it could be that the agency did not have the resources to destroy such information.
But when ASIO had completely ruled out a particular individual as a security interest, “it’s that kind of data…that I think they should turn their mind to and delete”, she said.
