Attorney-General rejects metadata warrants

Australia’s Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has made the extraordinary declaration that Australian law enforcement in Australia “would grind to a halt” if police officers and other law enforcement agents were forced to apply for a warrant every time they wanted to access Australians’ telecommunications data, according to an article in delimeter.com.au.

Last week, Budget Estimates hearing sessions conducted in Canberra (from Monday 27 May to Friday, 7 June 2013) heard that the Australian Federal Police had made 43,362 internal requests for telecommunications ‘metadata’ (data pertaining to the numbers, email addresses time, length and date involved in phone calls or emails, but not the content) over the past financial year. No warrant is required for these requests.

These issues, combined with historical data tracking law enforcement and other Federal Government agency use of metadata without warrants and the issues over the past week that the US-based National Security Agency has gained backdoor access into the data servers of major technology companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft, has spurred calls by Australian political groups for a ban on warrantless interception of Australian telecommunications data.

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