This information was originally published as part of a more comprehensive article covering what data retention is and how to protect yourself on robindoherty.com.
On October 13th, the new metadata retention law came into effect in Australia. Data about your phone and internet communications are to be retained for at least two years and be accessible without warrants by government agencies comprising 2500 people.
What phone data is retained?
Phone numbers of everyone you called or sent SMS to, or missed a call from, times and dates of calls and SMS, durations of calls, your rough location at time of call or SMS.
What internet data is retained?
Your IP address, time and duration of your web connections, the volume of your uploads and downloads, location and geographical data.
The law does not require carriers to retain ‘destination’ IP addresses (your web browsing history), but a carrier may do so.
For information on how to protect your phone and internet data, see the full article on robindoherty.com.
About your location…
Your location is recorded with your web and phone usage – this cannot easily be prevented. Here are some options to fix this problem (easiest to hardest):
- Be a part of the technical community that fights back against mass surveillance – join us on Slack.
- Leave your phone at home.
- Don’t use the internet…
What email data is retained?
If you use an Australian email service: who you’ve emailed, the date and time you sent email and attachment data volumes.
How can I protect my email?
We are contributing to an open source project, Pixelated, that aims to simplify email encryption, enable mass adoption by providing a compelling user experience, and redecentralise email (taking it out of the hands of a few big providers).
What next?
Want to be part of the technical community that aims to fight back against invasions of privacy like this?
Live in Melbourne? Come to our 2016 kick off meetup.
Follow @hackforprivacy and me @rdoh on Twitter.
Posted by Robin