Brace yourselves: data retention is coming.
Image: Getty
According to a News Limited report, the Parliament will this week play host to the long-awaited data retention legislation.
The legislation has been in the pipeline since August, when Prime Minister Tony Abbott along with Attorney-General George Brandis announced that Australia would get a series of new laws to fight terrorism and terrorist activity abroad.
The plan to shore up our nation from the terrorists has already seen Australia’s spy agencies given more power to surveil the public (and potentially the entire goddamn internet).
The government is currently debating a piece of legislation called the Foreign Fighters Bill which would make it illegal for Aussies to travel to declared warzones, in a bid to cut down on locals training with groups like IS to become lone-wolf terrorists upon their return.
The third and final tranche of the new legislative agenda surrounds data retention: a scheme which many believe would see Aussie telcos and ISPs compelled to capture data generated by customers for a period of two years. The data would then be made available to law enforcement agencies and used to create a case for solving crimes and prosecuting bad guys.
The data retention legislation is set to answer a question which ISPs, telcos and the concerned public have had on their minds for some time: what exactly constitutes metadata? And how much extra will we have to pay as consumers for our companies to store it?
Hopefully we get an answer to these questions and more this week. [News Limited]