Delimiter named in AFP search warrant for NBN leaks

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news Delimiter has reportedly been named in a search warrant issued by the Australian Federal Police authorising raids on a number of premises to seek documents related to a spate of damaging leaks which have come from within the NBN company over the past year.

Late last night AFP officers raided the Melbourne office of former Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, and the house of at least one Labor staffer working for Shadow Communications Minister Jason Clare, in an apparent attempt to ascertain the identity of whistleblowers who have leaked a series of key documents from within the NBN company.

The extraordinary move was confirmed by AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin this morning, after it was revealed by Labor last night.

This morning The Guardian wrote online that it had seen a “copy of the warrant”.

“Having now seen a copy of the warrant, it’s clear the raid last night was seeking documents and email accounts of the staffers – and it also names five media outlets, the ABC, The Australian, AFR, SMH and Delimiter.”

The two Labor staff members named have been reported to include Ryan Hamilton, normally an advisor to Clare, who is currently working in Labor’s campaign headquarters, and Andy Byrne, a specialist staff member in Clare’s office who has long acted as Labor’s main policy advisor on telecommunications matters.

It is being speculated this morning that the AFP also plans to raid the offices of media outlets regarding the matter.

Colvin confirmed in a press conference this morning that a claim of parliamentary privilege had been made over the documents seized from Labor, meaning that the AFP will not have access to the documents until Parliament is reformed after the Federal Election.

This has the possibility to increase the likelihood of raids on media outlets, due to the limited information that the AFP would have been able to garner from the overnight raids.

It is also possible that journalists’ metadata has been accessed with regard to the NBN leaks. Speaking to media this morning, AFP Commissioner Colvin would not confirm whether this had taken place.

There is no requirement to make journalists aware of their metadata having been accessed, under last year’s Data Retention legislation, although government-appointed public interest advocates would have the chance to argue privately against such access, if they chose.

The AFP has not been in contact with Delimiter over the raids. If the AFP does establish contact, Delimiter will inform readers of that contact, and then seek legal advice as to what next steps we should take.

The AFP investigation came about as a result of a referral from the NBN company itself in December last year.

The Opposition and a number of media outlets have published a number of sensitive NBN documents over the past year.

The documents have outlined a range of problems with the Coalition’s version of the NBN, including cost blow-outs, delays to the NBN rollout schedule, concerns about the quality of legacy networks the NBN company is acquiring from Telstra and Optus, and more. The NBN company has consistently questioned the authenticity of the leaked documents.

54 COMMENTS

  1. The documents have outlined a range of problems with the Coalition’s version of the NBN, including cost blow-outs, delays to the NBN rollout schedule, concerns about the quality of legacy networks the NBN company is acquiring from Telstra and Optus, and more. The NBN company has consistently questioned the authenticity of the leaked documents.

    And the nbn™/AFP have now confirmed their authenticity. Lovely “own goal” guys!

    • Indeed, they wouldn’t take this kind of action if the doc’s were fakes, you know like the Godwin Gretch emails TurnCoat fell for!!!

  2. “The NBN company has consistently questioned the authenticity of the leaked documents.”

    Well they just confirmed their veracity didn’t they?

  3. Is the AFP coming straight to the premise or are they parking down the street and using real coppers for the last mile Renai?

  4. I’d very very surprised if Renai had anything laying around of use to the AFP.

    on the other hand confiscating everything would significantly annoy him, but not stop him.

  5. I wonder if these documents actually contained any detail we didn’t already know.
    MTM Cost Blowout? We all knew that was going to happen before the 2013 election.
    MTM Delays? We knew that too (by virtue of all of us not having 25mbit – didn’t need docs to tell us this)
    MTM Quality of Legacy Networks? Well Duhh.
    All those docs did was to confirm what we already knew.

    Who’s the douche claiming these were actually a secret?

    • Yeah I can imagine the response.

      “Can we come in please, we have this fancy search warrant.”

      “Hmm … yes I think I’ll take that on notice. I don’t have the answers in front of me right now.”

      “GET THE TRUNCHEON”

  6. Yeah Renai, I wouldn’t be surprised if they confiscated every device you own. You may have to go and buy a new laptop this afternoon. I hope you have a backup of everything protected by someone unconnected – it would be pretty frustrating if you lost access to your servers because your passwords had been lost or compromised :-/

  7. Section 283 of the Telecommunication Act allows federal agencies to obtain almost any information held by a Service Provider about an individual as long as the matter is associated with a crime.

    Except for interceptions which are managed under the interception act what this means is that if the cops are investigating a crime they can pretty much demand anything they want from a telco even if you’re not even a suspect.

    The Feds work with ASD, Australian Signals Directorate and will have developed various data analytical systems to process larges amounts of records retained from a telco, which are predominately the mediation records used to develop billing data.

    Mediation records are a significantly richer data set as they contain large amounts of routing, IP and geographical information.

    Renai I would be raising a FOI on yourself to find out what records and when they were requested in relation to this and other matters.

    • FoI is useless if it was collected by anyone under national security pretenses, not only do they not have to release anything, it is a crime to do so.

  8. It’s ok… If anyone targets you, just say you are Rizz… Reality will back you up, I mean Rizz clearly has so many alts… ;-)

  9. Actually, another good thing that could come from this is if the ALP release a Fttdp policy, Mal and Mitch will find it difficult to lever the earlier ground work they were trying to lay about delays/expense of Fttdp, as all Labor needs to do now is point to the (now confirmed) leaks to show what an expensive debacle MtM is.

  10. I don’t think the Libs have any morales left, the more they try and throw mud the worse they look themselves

  11. A small comment on the leaked document on FTTdp (https://delimiter.com.au/2016/03/16/delimiter-publishes-nbns-leaked-secret-fttdp-plan/): one of the Companies mentioned as potential suppliers is NetComm Wireless, whose Chairman – Mr. Justin Milne – sits also in the Board of Directors of nbn (http://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/about-nbn-co/our-people/board-member-biographies.html).

    And NetComm Wireless is also the “selected” partner (by Ericsson or by someone else…) for the fixed wireless portion of the nbn construction (http://www.netcommwireless.com/information/press-releases/netcomm-to-provide-lte-fixed-wireless-devices-for-the-australian-national-broadband-network).

    UNBELIVABLE!!! Thanks God for having free access to those documents!!!

    • Interesting.

      It’s also interesting that the only two actual executives of the board are two ex-CEO’s of competitors to the NBN (Telstra and Vodafone) that were hand picked by Malcolm and that they don’t bother listing the ministers on the board (Mathias Cormann and Mitch Fifield).

      Considering “Non-Executive” directors just means advisory, it makes the board….well…fill in the blanks…

  12. Raiding media outlets? You know they’re hard up when it’s time to kill the messenger. Our federal governements are such narcissists.

    Thank god the government is using their (I’m mean our) resources and crime fighting powers to tackle the big issues like “why is our internet so slow” and “when am I going to be able to get the internet connected”.

    If only they could go after perhaps things like organised crime, white collar crime, etc.

    Apart from egg on politicians faces (which is not unusual), can someone tell me who the victim is in this crime?

    • Thank god the government is using their (I’m mean our) resources and crime fighting powers to tackle the big issues like “why is our internet so slow” and “when am I going to be able to get the internet connected”.

      As “events” have shown, only the ALP and independants “give a shit” about it.

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