What we found when we captured Senator David Leyonhjelms metadata The federal government says its controversial mandatory metadata storage proposal – which will force telcos and internet providers to store phone and web data on all Australians for two years – is necessary to fight serious crime. Prime Minister Tony Abbott described metadata, which will be available to law enforcement without a warrant if the Data Retention Bill becomes law, as not the content of the letter, its whats on the envelope. But a Fairfax Media investigation into what metadata can reveal has shown the envelope is almost transparent. If the bill passes it will represent a significant loss of privacy for all Australians, with law enforcement being able to derive far-reaching information and associations left behind by our digital footprints. Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm gave permission for metadata from his business address in Sydneys inner west, an agribusiness consulting company, to be captured and analysed. NCC Group, an information assurance firm with more than 15,000 clients worldwide, agreed to perform the analysis for Fairfax Media. It was overseen by its Asia-Pacific general manager, Wade Alcorn. They used off-the-shelf software to intercept all the data to and from the internet via a laptop plugged into the offices internet router. Using free online tools they stripped out about 99 per cent of what was captured, including the content of communications, and the industry-standard definition of web history – http and https traffic, which is all the data sent between your computer and the web server, including web addresses . Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, The act will expressly exclude a persons web browsing history. Its hard to work out exactly what the governments definition of web browsing history is, said Alcorn. It could be extremely narrow or it could be extremely broad.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 22:13:29 +0000