blog If you thought you had a solid grip on just how extensive Government surveillance of our electronic communications systems was, think again. The revelations just keep coming. Late last week mobile telco Vodafone revealed an extensive bucket list of surveillance measures which are used by governments in dozens of countries it operates in — including Australia — to retrieve information about its customers. The Guardian has an extensive article on the subject. The newspaper writes (we recommend you click here for the full article):
“The company has broken its silence on government surveillance in order to push back against the increasingly widespread use of phone and broadband networks to spy on citizens, and will publish its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report on Friday. At 40,000 words, it is the most comprehensive survey yet of how governments monitor the conversations and whereabouts of their people.”
In the article, Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, describes Vodafone’s revelations as a “nightmare scenario” for privacy, and it’s quite hard to disagree. The sheer depth and breadth of the surveillance activities which governments globally are mandating the telco to carry out are quite staggering. And Australia is far from being an exception in this area. In fact, Vodafone noted in its report that Australian authorities are world leaders in requesting so-called ‘metadata’ about Vodafone subscribers. Great.
Whew, luckily I’m not a Vodafone customer, so my metadata is perfectly safe! Everyone knows that the other two mobile companies in Oz would *never* just hand our data over to the government without telling anyone about it…
[rolls eyes]
So….did Bill Morrow know about this?
That’s what happens when you have no laws restricting access to such information – if it is not explicitly denied, then they are doing it. If there are legal exceptions (such as for ASIO) then they will exploit them. And then more restricted law enforcement will find a way to get access to the data held by their unrestricted bretheren (through cooperative or data sharing agreements). Right now pretty much any federal government employee can access your meta data simply by asking for it, which can pinpoint the location of your phone (and thus probably you) anywhere at any point in time, particularly if you had a phone call or sent a text during the period in question. It’s like carrying around a tracking device the government needs absolutely no warrant to access. Ludicrous.
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