back to article Oz metadata retention won't include URLs: report

The Australian government has reportedly circulated a private brief outlining how it intends to define “metadata”, according to The Australian. There are some snippets of new information in the copy of the document seen by The Oz: while the government is apparently excluding “content” from the data retention scheme, it now …

  1. EvanPyle

    I'd be happy with my billing information and IP address being collected, as far as I know this is pretty much the current state of play anyway because I can log into my ISP control panel and see my IP history. What we really need to know is what checks and balances will be in place before the information is handed out, I don't think anyone could justify dragnet style collection.

    1. Thorne

      When you log into your ISP, they store a couple of months worth of data. The government wants at least two years stored, preferably forever. They want this data to be accessible without a warrant.

      There are no checks and balances. If some cop doesn't like you they can go fishing. Even more scary is Hollywood media companies fishing for visitors to the Pirate Bay so they can start a blackmail system for fines under the threat of prosecution.

      Besides I bet they store far more than account holder names and ip addresses

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        and Sesame Street in Australia will soon be brought to you by the letters V, P, and N.

        I've stated this before and I'll state it again - by being lazing and trawling everyone's data irrespective of whether they have broken the law and made it so that you don't need any oversight to go looking through that data the security services have now brought forward greatly the time at which they will not be able to see anything. More and more sites are moving to always https. People that never knew about VPNs have heard them mentioned more and more frequently. Recently we have heard that a minister (likely Turnbull) had even demonstrated to a room full of luddites (Parliament?) how effective it is at masking your activities. How long before more Linux distros have TAILS like abilities? They really haven't thought this through have they?

        I have precious little to hide on the internet, spending most of my time reading news and technical articles, but I value my privacy and I shall be moving to a VPN connection so they can all piss right off.

        Anonymous because it'll give them something else to search for. Pricks.

  2. veti Silver badge
    Stop

    Premium content clickbait?

    Hmmm. It's hard to imagine that ISPs don't already store "financial information" about their customers. How exactly do they bill them?

    The story here is still way too vague to make any meaningful judgments about. "Trace and identify the source of a communication" - well, a web page is a "communication", isn't it? - so that does imply collecting URLs, one way or another.

    Please clarify what, exactly, I'd get out of it if I sufficiently bent my principles to subscribe to The Australian (and enrich Rupert Murdoch) to read this revelation?

  3. Gray Ham Bronze badge
    Unhappy

    Why the secrecy?

    While stating that URLs and “destination IP addresses” are excluded from the data collection, the report in The Australian says providers will be required to collect information sufficient to “trace and identify the source of a communication and the device used".

    Trace the source of the communication but not the destination? This just sounds to me like more obfuscation from a government that is desperate to keep its real proposals secret. I wonder if the final legislation will contain some provision that the actual definition of metadata will be by ministerial direction.

    Am I overly cynical, or what?

    1. Kevin (Just Kevin)

      Source vs destination

      In all the interviews I've seen/heard with people in the government who understand the topic they're talking about - ie Malcolm Turnbull - what they want is user/network/ip address/device/times. So you had IP address X on your mobile on Monday and you've had IP address Y on your home machine for the last 3 weeks. That's about it.

      If they break a terror site or something like that and they spot a login from an Australian IP address, they get a warrant to find out who had that IP address at that time. NO traffic info is needed, NO destination info is needed. And they don't want any of it. They just want to be able to map an IP address/time pair to a person.

      And the process for getting that info is already in place. It requires warrants and it already exists. Under warrant they can get much more information than that but Telcos/ISPs are not required to collect that info BEFORE the warrant. But all comms must be interceptable.

      This push is apparently just to ensure that the info above (RADIUS data effectively) is kept for a nominated period. ISPs already collect this information in some form or another and keep it for some time (for billing) which might be very short or very long.

      But I know Turnbull has been quite clear - they do not want ANY traffic information kept unless post a legal intercept order.

      1. Gray Ham Bronze badge

        Re: Source vs destination

        @Kevin

        And you are prepared to accept what Malcolm Turnbull is saying at face value?

        For one thing, he is not the one who is driving this legislation - that appears to be coming from the AG. If, as you point out, the information that the government wants and the process for obtaining it is already in place, then is there an urgent need for fresh legislation? and why is there a need for secrecy about the actual proposals?

        Given that this government has some spectacular form in trying to keep its proposals and actions hidden from the public, how confident are you that the actual data retained will be no broader than Minister Turnbull is suggesting?

        1. P. Lee
          Holmes

          Re: Source vs destination

          Indeed, it seems unlikely that new legislation is required for get ISP DHCP server logs preserved, especially as that does nothing for corporate or even home connections with more than one user. In fact, it does nothing at all for security beyond being able to find an address/bank-account of someone who may or may not warrant further investigation. Without destination information, all you'll have is a list of Australian IP addresses.

          On the other hand, if you wanted to bring in ISP account-holder liability for copyright infringement, regardless of the actual infringer, this sort of database might be quite handy...

    2. Cpt Blue Bear

      Re: Why the secrecy?

      "Am I overly cynical, or what?"

      No, not quite cynical enough I fear.

      My first thought when I read you summary "the source of the communication but not the destination" was that this has nothing to do with terrorism or crime (what really does?) and everything to do with tracing leaks.

      This is about finding and punishing whistle blowers, not security.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rupe's "The Australian"

    A right wing political rag supporting all that is wrong with the LNP government.

    Yes, I'm attacking the messenger.

    There is a strong link between proposed metadata retention laws and foxtel's bloodlust to identify Torrent users.

    1. ocratato

      Re: Rupe's "The Australian"

      Agreed. In the report I just read they want your IP address and the data volumes.

      That only makes sense if they are after movie downloaders.

      Collecting our IP addresses only makes sense if there is something else monitoring all the traffic. From what now know of the "5 Eyes" I think we can be fairly sure every packet is being logged somewhere.

  5. dan1980

    So what will you record?

    'While stating that URLs and “destination IP addresses” are excluded from the data collection, the report in The Australian says providers will be required to collect information sufficient to “trace and identify the source of a communication and the device used”.'

    As some have pointed out, above, this is a little odd.

    @Cpt Blue Bear suggested it was therefore aimed at "tracing leaks". But let's forget the purpose for a moment - how is it possible to trace anything this way?

    If I visit <insert evil, no, no, you mustn't website here> what information does the government have? They know that I had IP address xx.xx.xx.xx at a certain date/time and it was used to initiate an HTTP session.

    If they don't have destination details and aren't recording the 'content' (and the HTTP session is most fucking definitely content) they can't know what site I visited. How then is this information of ANY use?

    "An IP address assigned to Dan was used to initiate 17 HTTP sessions over a period of 10 minutes on April 28th, 2015, with total traffic of 12.6 Mb down and 0.9Mb up."

    How do they go from that to:

    "Dan accessed: 'Jihad Joe's Online Guide for Terror and Growing Excellent Beards', read the article: 'One Weird Trick for Planting IEDs' and then downloaded plans and a component list for homemade pipe bombs."

    ???

    Which is the reason why this whole thing is a joke - you can't gain anything useful without gathering information that the public would really rather you didn't. Any attempt to clarify this mess has failed and this is no different.

    At best it is incompetence and ignorance. More likely, it is deliberate obfuscation and outright lies.

    In my mind, it is the later. The Government know full well that the truth of what they are proposing is not something the Australian people want. Labor were no different, except that they decided to shelve the proposal due to this. They want it too, of course, but knew that the people didn't and they couldn't take the hit. The Coalition are trying to push it through by excluding the public from the debate, by dismissing our concerns as unfounded and ill-informed but then utterly failing to inform us better.

    To top it off, they claim that everyone is for it, despite the fact that the whole tech world is against it. No, they mean that the people who are pushing for it (e.g. ASIO, ASIS, the Federal Police, the US, Uncle Rupert, etc...) are for it. Well, duh.

  6. joeW

    What metadata though?

    Store enough "metadata" and you don't need to store the URLs.

  7. PeeWee

    Scope and use

    Some more details on ITNews http://bit.ly/1rwg1hK.

    Quote ..................

    The Government wants telecommunications companies to store:

    names, addresses, birthdates, financial and billing information of internet and phone account holders;

    traffic data such as numbers called and texted, as well as times and dates of communications;

    when and where online communications services start and end;

    a user’s IP address;

    type and location of communication equipment; and

    upload and download volumes, among others.

    ..................

    First comment - 'among others' So we're still not getting the complete picture, but there is a pattern appearing here.

    There are some key points that are raised here (remembering that, at this stage this data is to be handed over without warrant or independent oversight in anything but the broadest form).

    There's new stuff there - Financial and billing information is a jumping off point for further inquiries It becomes a warrantless way to get hold of a target's account details or CC number.

    Lots more geolocation info than we've heard mention of before

    It's transfer volumes that is the most interesting though - this is the clearest indication yet that this will be used to support copyright investigations - Remember, it's been made quite clear that isn't just about national security and terrorism, it's not even limited to serious crime (whatever that is), it's far more generic.

    Being warrantless, there is also no information about how the data can be requested - we're assuming that the question would be ' hand over the logs for John Doe', but I've seen nothing to suggest that it can't be 'hand over all logs where upload volumes exceed x'

    And one other thing... It's not really metadata, is it...

    1. Tim Bates

      Re: Scope and use

      There's a PDF copy of the actual consultation document on one of SMH's articles... If you're keen on being really concerned about the plan, it's linked here: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/secret-data-retention-discussion-paper-leaked-20140827-108yyh.html

  8. Barrie Shepherd

    As I see it they are trying to hose down the public outrage.

    They don't need to know from your ISP that you visited www.naughtysite.com IF they have a warrant to monitor the traffic of www.naughtysite.com.

    They know from the legal monitoring of www.naughtysite.com what IP addresses accessed it, so it's simple to trawl their ISP stored "free access" metadata to find out who that naughty person was.

    In other words so long as they monitor the IPs of connections made to a site for which they have a legal interception warrant they will know who accessed it. Sort of reverse engineering!

    No amount of hosing down will change this.

    1. dan1980

      @Barrie Shepherd

      If what you say is, in fact, the plan, then at least the government will need a warrant to monitor and end-to-end session.

      The question then becomes one of which is less undesirable - the Government being able to see all visitors to a site they are monitoring or being able to see all sites a monitored person is accessing.

      Personally, I think the former (i.e. what you are saying may be the case) is the worse of the two because it means that people are able to see at least some traffic of users that are under no suspicion.

      But is that really problematic? I suppose it's really no different than getting a warrant to view log entires of a premises to see who has come and gone.

      I just don't know, really.

  9. Tim Bates

    Just tell us the bloody plan!

    I wish they'd just come out and publish what they've got so far. All this hearsay and speculation is getting silly and rather worrying.

    One major flaw I see is this - if only retail phone and internet providers are to comply, what's the point? Find a connection used by decent numbers of people with relaxed WiFi security, and sit in your car. Then it's their problem when George Brandis comes busting their door down.

    On the other hand, if they want data retained by the customers aswell, then I see a BIG market for sales of equipment - compliant routers, new PBX systems, etc - and audit services to check your business complies. Might work out pretty damn awesome for some people.

  10. Gecko

    It's just the last mile

    Just finished reading the pdf.

    Basically we can reasonably assume that they are capable of capturing the full flow of internet traffic on there own.

    What had always been the hard part is to trace back from a dynamically assigned ip address to a physical Mac (or IMEI on mobiles). This allocation, and it's relation to a username and billing contact always occurs inside the isp and is invisible to gov unless they specifically request it. Once they get this, all data can be traced to a named individual.

    This is why they can state that they don't want the url or ip addresses - they already have that.

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