Oz lawyers wig out over data retention

Four years into Australia's data retention debate, the country's peak body representing lawyers has managed to make a statement on the issue.

The Law Council of Australia says it's adopted a policy opposing the mandatory data retention that the government wants to get through Parliament, partly because it's noticed that the laws appear to undermine client-lawyer confidentiality.

In particular, the LCA has decided that rather than extend access to retained data*, the government should legislate to expand the application of warrants for data access. In its statement (PDF), the council quotes president Michael Colbran QC as saying warrants “should be required to access personal information to ensure that it is only accessed where it is really necessary for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime or threats to national security.”

The LCA echoes many other contributions to the debate in Australia and overseas, in stating that the data retention regime nust be demonstrated to be “reasonable, necessary and proportionate”, and also notes that as it stands, the government's proposed legislation allows the dataset to grow over time without the involvement of parliament.

That statement also contradicts the government's spin that the legislation merely formalises current practice by carriers, saying: “It appears that under the proposed data retention scheme, more and additional kinds of telecommunications data will be available – both in terms of volume and potentially the quality of the data retained”. ®