Jon Lawrence: National security? Data laws misused to spy
ATTORNEY-GENERAL George Brandis told us in November 2014 the data retention regime “applies only to the most serious crime, to terrorism, to international and transnational organised crime, to paedophilia, where the use of metadata has been particularly useful as an investigative tool, … only to crime and only to the highest levels of crime”.
The mandatory data retention legislation was duly rushed through the parliament in March 2015 at a time of “heightened national security concern”. Remember all those flags?
But the claim that it was all about national security and child predators, was, of course, far from the complete truth. Telecommunications data — more commonly, metadata — is also extremely useful in identifying the source of government leaks and for tracking down whistleblowers.
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