A nugget from the PJCIS report into data retention. Looks like NSW Police use it to do geolocation: "it is possible to use telecommunication data as a corroborative tool […] the person at or near the scene of the crime which is independent of other potential evidence."

Data given to AFP is kept forever. "all historic and prospective telecommunications data received by the AFP is routinely retained, except where there is a legislative requirement to delete the data."

NSW Pol doesn't really know much about what it does with data. "The NSW Police Force Corporate Request System is unable to generate the requested information." or "as above" are all it says. #kwality

If only it maintained some of "data about data" or 'metadata' about its operations.

Home Affairs "noted that the Australian public has strong reservations about the sharing of their personal information and noted the Department’s commitment to managing Australian’s data appropriately"
Like revealing the personal details of 774,000 people: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/03/home-affairs-data-breach-may-have-exposed-personal-details-of-700000-migrants

"The OAIC further noted that the acts and practices of intelligence agencies are not subject to particular aspects of the Privacy Act"
Privacy is not really protected very well in Australia. We need a federal Bill of Rights.

The cops think data retention is great, and cite their use of it a lot as 'evidence' of this greatness.
Law Council of Australia notes it's used mostly for stuff to do with drugs, not finding terrorists or pedophiles, as it was sold to us.

People use drugs a lot, but this isn't seen as evidence of drugs being great for some reason.

The cops are sad the data they get given from the telcos isn't in some pre-massaged and universally accessible, easy to process, structured format.
[Every data scientist on Earth howls with laughter]

Australia has no substantively established common law right to privacy and no constitutional protection of privacy.
That is something we need to fix, and fast.

The Australian Government, so far, has been reluctant to do this, because it's working hard to turn itself into Facebook so it can spy on everything you do all day.

You might wonder why they like to yell about how bad Facebook and Google are while trying to do exactly the same thing, but then, you could say the same about the CCP and face surveillance.

There's a bunch of oversight stuff that boils down to more work for regulators that are already overwhelmed and just had their budgets cut, so that'll be super-effective*.

"international developments regarding the data retention schemes are in a state of legal and technological flux"
Lots of other places have decided their schemes are hella illegal or useless or both.
Australia plows on regardless.

Status quo, some good improvements, mostly minor tweaks.
The cops will continue to lose their War on Drugs instead of us treating it as a public health issue. Huzzah!