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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Mandatory data retention [soylentnews.org] is set to begin on October 13th in Australia, but it doesn't look like many telecoms/ISPs are compliant [theregister.co.uk]:

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 [abc.net.au] 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 [soylentnews.org]

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