Privacy fears over longer retention of names and addresses in Census 2016 are understandable, but are also misinformed and exaggerated.
Former ASIO head David Irvine saw data retention and metadata as effective counter-terror measures. But experience overseas is proving otherwise.
Lukas Coch/AAP
The value and utility of the NSA’s metadata retention programs – which formed the template for Australia’s metadata regime – have too often been over-exaggerated.
Would reporter Bob Woodward have been able to protect Deep Throat’s identity from today’s surveillance tools?
Reuters/Alex Gallardo
Four decades on, in a digital era of surveillance and data storage, Watergate remains a useful yardstick for assessing the value of source confidentiality.
Nothing sinister, just taking a quick peek.
Smit via Shutterstock
A Swedish court decision means Julian Assange will remain confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Like the muckrakers of old, he offends the powerful, but his journalistic cause is just.
A responsible media is cautious about what leaked information it will publish.
Flickr/Alex BuckyBit Covic
The Abbott government’s efforts to amend its data retention bill amid concerns about journalists protecting their sources is still a worry. And others should be concerned too, including MP.
Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten are both desperate, for their separate reasons, to get the metadata legislation cleared away this parliamentary fortnight rather than have it hanging until the budget session…
The supply side of information security professionals is not keeping up with the demand.
Image sourced from Shutterstock.com
As the Australian government pushes on with its data retention bill there are still questions about what safeguards and protections are in place, and a look at similar moves that have failed overseas.
The metadata report disregards a range of reports demonstrating that retention is ineffective.
Flickr/r2hox
The endorsement of Australia’s data retention bill raises questions about why the reforms are being pushed now, when they had been resisted by others for so long.
The language about metadata is often contradictory.
Robert/Flickr