Australia’s new data retention laws nominally come into effect tomorrow - Good Friday - but Internet Australia still maintains the scheme is unlikely to fully achieve the Federal Government’s aims.
The data retention law was passed nearly two years ago on the grounds of an urgent need to combat terrorism, but according to Internet Australia there are major weaknesses in the law and it has repeated a call for the Government to bring forward a review of the scheme scheduled to take place in 2019.
“The fact is, the Government doesn’t actually know how many ISP’s there are much less how to find them all,” said IA executive chair Anne Hurley.
“The Attorney-General’s Department received 210 applications for funding under the scheme and approved 180. However, it is widely believed there are more than 250 ISP’s out there, possibly many more.”
{loadposition peter}Last year the then CEO of IA, Laurie Patton, questioned the scheme on cost and operational grounds.
"International experience has found that data retention is of limited, if any, value in the fight against terrorism. Many European countries are struggling with or winding back their data retention schemes in the light of concerns for personal privacy rights. Yet we will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this questionable law,” Patton said.
Hurley said today that the ability of the security agencies to create a mass store of everyone’s metadata is a prerequisite for the scheme to work effectively.
“If there are huge gaps in the data collection the value of the scheme will be severely diminished”, she said.
According to IA, the long term implications of the Data Retention Act also include the potential for a loss of competition in the supply of Internet services, with Hurley warning the compliance costs of the scheme will be felt hardest among smaller operators.
"Our fear is that many of smaller ISP's who provide niche, especially in regional Australia, are with another technical and financial hurdle that threatens the very variability of their businesses. Our ISP members are very unhappy and with good reason.
“We have a flawed scheme that will see consumers paying more for their Internet. If we must have a data retention scheme the Government should properly fund it and make sure it will actually work,” Hurley concluded.