Greens slam great big new tax on tweeting

Laws requiring phone carriers to store data that could be sought under warrant as evidence will impose a "great big new tax" on every tweet, email and text message Australians send, the Senate has heard.

The Senate debated a draft bill on Tuesday evening, which will allow law enforcement agencies to request the preservation of communications that could be sought under warrant as evidence, including SMS messages and emails.

The bill also allows for increased internationalcooperation between Australian and overseas cyber crime investigators, and extends the scope of existing commonwealth computer offences, while bringing Australia into line with the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.
Australian Greens senator Scott Ludlam warned Australian policing authorities are seeking to outsource responsibility for data storage to the telco sector.
"That imposes costs on carriers which they have to pass on to customers," he said.
He borrowed the opposition's anti-carbon tax slogan, saying there would be "a great big new tax on telecommunications, on every tweet you send, email you receive, every Skype chat you have".
Senator Ludlam argued there was a need for laws to catch up on technological developments so authorities could net tech savvy cyber criminals, however privacy protection should not be completely sacrificed.
The Greens are also concerned that data stored could be given to foreign countries for use in criminal cases where people are facing the death penalty.
Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis warned many telecommunications companies were "anxious" about the implementation of the bill.
He said the coalition would support the bill with the government amendments, which were largely drawn from recommendations by a joint parliamentary committee on cybersafety.
Debate on the Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 was adjourned.

ninemsn.com.au 20 Au 2012

What an absolute joke the new laws are. 

The excuse is always given as 'Cybercrime' or 'terrorism' or 'pedophilia', but the real agenda is not to stamp out any of the above mentioned criminal activities, but rather to monitor the masses.