Interviews from a range of sensitive research topics may be at risk. These include immigration, crime and corruption.
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Australia’s metadata laws offer weak protection to journalists, but they don’t offer any to academics conducting confidential interviews.
The UK government has blurred the line by failing to adequately safeguard human rights with its investigatory powers law.
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The government’s Snoopers’ Charter didn’t permit blanket indiscriminate data retention, the Court of Appeal recently ruled. I strongly disagree.
Then government’s new law enabling the collection of metadata raises serious privacy concerns.
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Australia’s data retention law is one of the most comprehensive and intrusive data collection schemes in the Western world, and should be challenged.
The ABS has safeguards to protect privacy and secure data collected in the census.
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Privacy fears over longer retention of names and addresses in Census 2016 are understandable, but are also misinformed and exaggerated.
Former ASIO head David Irvine saw data retention and metadata as effective counter-terror measures. But experience overseas is proving otherwise.
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The value and utility of the NSA’s metadata retention programs – which formed the template for Australia’s metadata regime – have too often been over-exaggerated.
Would reporter Bob Woodward have been able to protect Deep Throat’s identity from today’s surveillance tools?
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Four decades on, in a digital era of surveillance and data storage, Watergate remains a useful yardstick for assessing the value of source confidentiality.
Nothing sinister, just taking a quick peek.
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An independent review recommends greater transparency but ultimately concludes surveillance can continue.
Supporters of Julian Assange mark his 1,000th day in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in March.
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A Swedish court decision means Julian Assange will remain confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Like the muckrakers of old, he offends the powerful, but his journalistic cause is just.
A responsible media is cautious about what leaked information it will publish.
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If confidential sources can still be exposed by the government’s new data retention legislation, why risk leaking anything to the media?
Mountains of data are being collected on you, and much of it is beyond your grasp.
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Metadata is only the beginning. The Big Data trend means there’s a lot more information about us out there that can be tracked or monitored.
Many of your online activities leave a digital trace that can reveal your identity.
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Avoiding the metadata retention laws and sending messages entirely privately is harder than it might seem.
The government can’t read your email, but it will be able to find out where you sent it to and from.
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There are still unanswered questions about the data retention bill, but it’s now too late to get answers before it is passed into law.
Journalists tackle the Prime minister Tony Abbott at a typical media conference at Parliament House in Canberra.
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The Abbott government’s efforts to amend its data retention bill amid concerns about journalists protecting their sources is still a worry. And others should be concerned too, including MP.
(Security) Service with a smile.
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Committee report reveals ‘citizens dossiers’ feared but never admitted to have existed for decades.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is anxious to keep bipartisanship on national security.
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Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten are both desperate, for their separate reasons, to get the metadata legislation cleared away this parliamentary fortnight rather than have it hanging until the budget session…
The supply side of information security professionals is not keeping up with the demand.
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As the US and UK look to the opportunities presented by cybersecurity, Australia is still dealing with a critical skills shortage.
Is mass data retention the way to go or should authorities be forced to come back with a warrant to find what they want?
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As the Australian government pushes on with its data retention bill there are still questions about what safeguards and protections are in place, and a look at similar moves that have failed overseas.
The metadata report disregards a range of reports demonstrating that retention is ineffective.
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The endorsement of Australia’s data retention bill raises questions about why the reforms are being pushed now, when they had been resisted by others for so long.
The language about metadata is often contradictory.
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We should be wary of those who describe metadata as being both benign and powerful at the same time.
There are still unanswered questions about the government’s proposed metadata retention bill.
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What the experts think of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security’s report on the proposed metadata retention laws.