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Australian government hiring guardians of retained metadata

Who watches the Watchmen?

The metadata retention scheme dreamed up by Australia's federal government may be stalled and in a shambles, but the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security isn't waiting for things to go wrong: it's recruiting specialists to watch over the scheme.

Turned up by Crikey (which Tweeted it as a search for “contractors”, which it's clearly not*), a job ad seeks “telecommunications intelligence analysts” with experience handling metadata.

The latter will surely draw from a fairly narrow pool, since the legislation mandating telecommunications data retention only passed this year and only came into legal effect in October. Moreover, most of the country's telcos aren't yet ready to actually start data collection, and are madly requesting extensions out to 2017 from the Attorney-General's Department (AGD).

Still, whoever is doing the hiring is trying: they understand that the analysts will have to understand the law (“experience working within strict compliance frameworks”), the technology (“a technical background specialising in telecommunications data”), and “technical experience in either law enforcement and/or the telecommunications service provider industry”.

While Crikey considers the role to be for a spy, Vulture South's bet is on the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, since the unnamed department “plays an intelligence, regulatory and oversight function” and the applicants will be “required to monitor the performance of other agencies who are involved in this legislative scheme”.

The scheme might be a shambles and the AGD might be completely at sea stipulating its requirements, but it's nice to think that someone's on the ball. ®

*Bootnote: The ad is marked “contract/temp” on jobs listing site Seek. The description says “Ideally you will be permanent employee of a Commonwealth agency and eligible for a transfer at level”. In other words, the role isn't for outsiders: it's for people to take transfers to set up the operation, then return to some other government role. ®

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