Posts by PeeWee

Boffins brew up FIRST CUPPA in SPAAACE using wireless energy (well, sort of)

For the sake of narrative imperative, please tell me that it will result in a liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Google flushes out users of old browsers by serving up CLUNKY, AGED version of search

Mmmmm... Free upgrade...

I have to keep my IE version at 8 due to legacy apps that need the thing (we're trialing 11, but it's got some way to go yet). So, I've just fired it up to see this.

Yup, as described. What I wasn't expecting was how much I prefer the older version. I feel a TamperMonkey script for Chrome coming on...

Oz metadata retention won't include URLs: report

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...