Telstra hands over browsing history in current warrantless metadata regime

[DiscoStu]

Telstra's revelation that it has previously handed over details of websites visited by its customers to government agencies without a warrant suggests mandatory data retention may still include URLs, according to the Parliamentary Library.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Attorney-General George Brandis announced that the government would begin developing a framework to require Australian telecommunications companies to retain customer "metadata" for access by law enforcement agencies.

After Abbott and Brandis fumbled the initial explanation of what actual metadata the government wanted to be retained, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the data that would be retained would be what telcos already hand over under the existing access regime, such as call logs and assigned IP addresses, and not web browsing history.

"The police, the security services, ASIO and so forth, are not asking the government to require telcos to record or retain information they are not currently already recording," Turnbull said.

"There has been some concern expressed that the government was proposing that telcos should retain for two years a record of the websites you visit when you're online, whether that's expressed in the form of their domain names or their IP addresses; in other words that there would be a requirement to keep a two-year record of your web browsing or web surfing history — that is not the case," he said.

But a new paper from the Parliamentary Library indicates that URL history has in fact been part of the existing regime.

"The current regime for access to metadata arguably allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access URLs under the umbrella of 'metadata' (provided the URL does not identify the content of the communication) despite stakeholders holding contradictory perspectives," report author Jaan Murphy states.

"This ambiguity indicates that the proposed mandatory metadata retention scheme, if modelled on existing laws, may exacerbate the confusion surrounding the definition of metadata."

Murphy pointed to a 2012 submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security from Australia's largest telecommunications' company Telstra where the company said it had, in fact, handed over URL data to government agencies under the current access regime.

In the explanation, Telstra details exactly what data it has provided under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act.

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crazy, still if you don't use a vpn by now you kind of deserve it i guess