Australian Government's Metadata Retention Plan: Privacy vs. Security (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: The Australian government wants your metadata, and it wants your service providers to hand it over. It's planned a two-year data retention period that would force companies to source some types of phone and web data, known as metadata, for up to two years. So without a warrant, and at the click of a button, government agencies would be able to demand the information they want. But the thing is, metadata is arguably more revealing than the actual content of the communication itself. Who you called, where you were, who you emailed, all of this information can be requested and will have to be stored by telecommunications companies. We're told it's essential for our law enforcement agencies, but what would the plan mean for ordinary Australians? The government says they'll make companies secure your data, but at the moment it's pretty light on the details. What is for certain is that at some point in time, perhaps when you least expect it, even the strongest security can be broken. Estimates to set up the scheme are running at almost $400 million a year. Some critics are calling this trickle-down effect to consumers a form of surveillance tax. The government says it will cover some of the initial costs, but as to how much that will be, and how it will affect you, we really have no idea at the moment. Did you think I'd forgotten you? Third is torrenting. Plenty of you naughty people out there download films and TV shows, and some of the big businesses are not happy about it. Some critics have suggested they may try and use metadata in civil cases, like copyright actions. We don't know how likely this is, and the government says it has agreed to make it harder for companies to use data in this kind of way. But, and there is a but, it wants to have the power to make exceptions to the rule in the future. I feel exposed. Next there's whistleblowing and journalism, affecting the type of society we want to live in. If you want to expose serious wrongdoing to a journalist, you might have to be even more careful now. Almost every news organisation in the country has warned that data retention is a real threat to press freedom. That's because it could be used to blow the cover on a source, potentially landing them in jail. The government has now agreed to make changes to the bill so that access to journalism metadata requires a warrant. But at this point, we haven't seen exactly what those changes will be, and how they will work. Oh hey, last but not least. We all have secrets, and most people want to make sure that stuff stays buried. The government says if you don't have anything to hide, then you don't have anything to worry about. But who's to say when the awkward stuff might surface? Law enforcement agencies do need the tools to investigate crimes, and they do need to have the right power. But the question for the Australian public is just where they want to draw the line in the sand. As far as I'm concerned, a lot of them clean out of Swinburne. What, all the Aborigines? Every one of them. And the university as well. And the university as well. They're the ones that cause the trouble in this town.