AG must reject agencies seeking access to telecommunications data
EFA today calls on the Attorney-General to promptly reject the requests from most of the 61 agencies that are seeking to be provided with warrantless access to telecommunications data (metadata). It is less than a year since the parliament resolved to restrict warrantless access to telecommunications data to a carefully chosen list of agencies, and […]
Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant
The governments of Australia, Germany, the UK and the US are destroying your privacy. Some people don’t see the problem… “I have nothing to hide, so why should I care?” It doesn’t matter if you have “nothing to hide”. Privacy is a right granted to individuals that underpins the freedoms of expression, association and assembly; […]
EFA’s 2016 Wish List
While this has been a difficult year for the digital rights agenda in Australia, 2016 looks much more promising. With an election looming in which innovation and ‘tech-savviness’ are likely to be regular talking points, it provides one of the best opportunities for digital rights issues to really break into the mainstream. As we did last […]
EFA calls for universal warrant requirement for data retention
EFA welcomes the report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights [PDF] which confirms that the protections for journalists included in this year’s mandatory data retention legislation are inadequate and may ‘limit the right to an effective remedy, fair hearing, privacy and freedom of expression.’ While the Committee’s report primarily addresses the procedural shortcomings […]
Australia: global village idiot (again)?
Australian Internet pioneer Geoff Huston thinks our data retention laws will result in our web browsing history being retained and thinks this relegates us to global village idiot status. Again. I recall from some years back, when we were debating in Australia some national Internet censorship proposal de jour, that if the Internet represented a […]