“I get that the government doesn’t want browsing history at the moment . . . They’ll come back for it five years later. It’s a whole boiling frog thing and I just feel like the temperature just got a little too hot,” he told the New News conference, referring to the controversy surrounding the toughened laws.
But Paul Fletcher, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Communications, insisted that the government was only concerned with metadata and that the amended laws would not give the national security agency, ASIO, the right to know the content of a person’s browsing history.
“I get that the government doesn’t want browsing history at the moment . . . They’ll come back for it five years later. It’s a whole boiling frog thing and I just feel like the temperature just got a little too hot.” — Greens Senator Scott Ludlum
“Metadata is not the content of conversations in a telecommunications context,” Mr Fletcher said. “In the case of an Internet browsing session, it is specifically the originating [Internet provider] address and that IP address can change several times during the browsing session.
“The fundamental point that we want to make is that the legal capacity for agencies to get access to information has been there for a long time.”
But Senator Ludlum said Mr Fletcher had “managed to make saturation of real time surveillance seem really harmless, which is quite impressive”.
He said that even if the government did not collect browsing content, knowing a person’s location was of serious concern.
“Let’s presume that most people in the room are carrying a handset around,” he continued. “You can track the location of those within a few metres of everywhere you take it. That is content when you overlay that with social networks.”
Senator Ludlum and Mr Fletcher were part of a panel discussion on media policy at the New News conference that included Federal Opposition communications spokesman Jason Clare and media expert and former member of the Convergence Review Malcolm Long.
The new laws, contained in the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No.)1 2014, were passed by the Senate on September 26 by a vote of 44 to 12 and gives ASIO broad-ranging power to monitor Australians’ Internet usage. There is no limit to the number of computers that can be accessed through the issuing of a single warrant. Under the new laws, journalists and whistleblowers also face up to 10 years in jail for disclosing classified information.
The Greens voted against the Bill, calling the new measures a “relentless expansion of powers”.
Senator Ludlum noted the additional constraints on journalists.
“This means that the protections in Commonwealth law [have been] circumvented and [are] practically worthless,” he told the gathering at the Wheeler Centre.
“We all want a diversity of voices and a vigorous flow of news. One of the key themes is let’s identify areas where existing regulation no longer fit for purpose.” — Paul Fletcher, parliamentary secretary
The future of Australia’s media industry was also interrogated, with Mr Long calling for greater diversity given the current “suffocating and difficult” environment which he said was deterring innovation.
“The point is that good journalistic organisations will need the freedom to move across platforms,” he said.
Mr Fletcher agreed, adding that media was facing a “fundamental transformation” and the challenge was to find “the right regulatory response to maximise the current industry players to contribute to the outcome”. He said the government was “looking for a consensus among industry stakeholders”.
“We all want a diversity of voices and a vigorous flow of news. One of the key themes is let’s identify areas where existing regulation no longer fit for purpose.”
The Convergence Review, which was completed in 2012, examined media ownership and control, content standards and promoting locally produced content in an Australian context. But little came of it as the change of government brought a shift in policy direction and the thgreat of funding cuts to the national broadcaster, the ABC.
Mr Clare advocated for increased funding for public broadcasting, specifically the ABC and SBS. He said that the government’s job was to assess the stations on merits and some of the things that the government had flagged were also flagged in the Convergence Review.
Senator Ludlam agreed and said that community broadcasting brought diversity that, ironically, was lacking on the white, male-dominated New News panel that was discussing the issues.
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