Australia's Attorney-General's Department hasn't worked out when money to support telcos' and ISPs' data retention efforts will start to flow.
The department, left in the hands of Grand Sysadmin George Brandis in Malcolm Turnbull's cabinet reshuffle, has been criticised by the Communications Alliance for being vague about the funding arrangements.
The industry had asked for government funding to help it adjust to the demands of data retention, which require the collection of user IP addresses, e-mail headers, and similar data. This has to be stored and secured for a minimum of two years, accessible to whichever agencies the government decides to grant access to.
It seems ISPs will have to take the "garden shed" storage option if they haven't the spare cash for data retention, because the government doesn't know when its promised support package will commence.
Alliance CEO John Stanton told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's AM radio program the best advice available from the AGD is that the money – AU$131 million allocated for this financial year – will flow sometime in this financial year.
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Mandatory data retention is set to begin on October 13th in Australia, but it doesn't look like many telecoms/ISPs are compliant:
Today, October 13th, is the day on which Australian telecommunications service providers are required to start retaining customer metadata in an orderly fashion determined by law, but fewer than ten are ready to do so and some have asked the government if they can store the data without encryption.
The legislation, co-sponsored by attorney-general George Brandis and former communications minister (now Australia's "agile" prime minister) Malcolm Turnbull, officially applies as of today, but a survey of members conducted by industry group the Communications Alliance suggests it remains a shambles.
Out of the 63 providers who responded to a survey conducted by the Alliance, nearly nobody knows what's actually going on: 84 per cent of them aren't yet compliant, just under 58 per cent had submitted their data retention implementation plans (DRIPs) to the department, and of those, nearly 76 per cent don't know if their plans have been rubber-stamped by the Communications Access Coordinator. So: around nine providers, presumably starting at the top where legal and technical resources abound, are fully compliant.
ABC reports on the plight of a small ISP and variance in compliance costs:
Craig runs a small ISP in regional Australia and his business will not be ready to collect metadata.
He said he had begun the lengthy process to explain to the Government how the data will be retained, but it was taking too much time and was putting the business at risk. "We've now reached 400 pages of this document [the DRIP]. It's a very complicated process and it's eating into our profitability," he said. "The amount of time we're spending on it is so high that it has become an unviable thing to continue on. "We have to look after our clients, customers and keep working."
[...] There is a huge variance in estimates for the cost to business of implementing data retention - 58 per cent of ISPs say it will cost between $10,000 and $250,000; 24 per cent estimate it will cost over $250,000; 12 per cent think it will cost over $1,000,000; some estimates go as high as $10 million.
Previously: Data Retention in Australia: Still a Shambles Ahead of October Rollout
Some things in life are very predictable... the Earth continues to orbit around the Sun and Theresa May is trying to crack down on the Internet and ban/break encryption:
In the wake of Saturday's terrorist attack in London, the Prime Minister Theresa May has again called for new laws to regulate the internet, demanding that internet companies do more to stamp out spaces where terrorists can communicate freely. "We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed," she said. "Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide."
Her comments echo those made in March by the home secretary, Amber Rudd. Speaking after the previous terrorist attack in London, Rudd said that end-to-end encryption in apps like WhatsApp is "completely unacceptable" and that there should be "no hiding place for terrorists".
[...] "Theresa May's response is predictable but disappointing," says Paul Bernal at the University of East Anglia, UK. "If you stop 'safe places' for terrorists, you stop safe places for everyone, and we rely on those safe places for a great deal of our lives."
Last month New Scientist called for a greater understanding of technology among politicians. Until that happens, having a reasonable conversation about how best to tackle extremism online will remain out of reach.
End-to-end encryption is completely unacceptable? Now that's what I call an endorsement.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by FakeBeldin on Sunday September 27 2015, @08:46PM
How about just forwarding a mail with all the required data to the government?
Likely there are laws about how long the government is required to keep all mails and such. Just piggyback off of that. Any law enforcement agency needs data? You just FOIA (Freedom of Information Acti - likely a different term in Australia) it out of the government :)
For bonus points, you can encrypt the data with good crypto and stupid keys - e.g. AES, date + account name of the account that generated the logged activity. This'll make it trivial to search for specific events by users, but will require someone to decrypt all data for any other use.
I like the idea of reflecting all the costs of storing data back on the government :)
(Score: 3, Funny) by arslan on Sunday September 27 2015, @10:42PM
yea.. malcolm turnbull's email address would be a good start. Heck all Australian's should just forward all their mail traffic there and save the ISPs some trouble.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday October 01 2015, @01:38PM
Heh, maybe even have a global “sharing day” where everyone sends their mail (encrypted or not) with a carbon copy to the NSA and other TLAs, the US Congress & Senate, all Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, etc. governments or simply to all governments globally and the UN and others. Throw in all the bs “news” media too, all their journalists.
Could make for a great publicity stunt —an “Is this what you want?” campaign— if at least a few million people joined in, and since there was already more than five million innocent people on the lists some time ago… :D
I'd do it, from all my accounts too (and I could sign up for some more).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @01:40AM
Wouldn't the NSA have that data on file [wikipedia.org]? It seems probable that Australia will remain one of the Five Eyes [wikipedia.org] until America goes belly-up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @07:36AM
The government is apparently in a debt crisis spending billions on health refugees infrastructure with a huge deficit from billions owed in tax by big companies and people dodging tax. They still won't say how much this will cost. $5 a month? $10 a month? $100 a year? Just another tax. No point either. Everyone who cares has a vpn.