Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition does not support the two amendments. The new provisions in the legislation distinguish between access to historical telecommunications data—that is, data which is already in existence at the time of the request—and prospective data, being data that is collected as it is created and forwarded to the agency in what is commonly referred to as near real time. Access to prospective telecommunications data is only available to ASIO or criminal law enforcement agencies because of—and quite rightly—the high privacy implications of this type of access. But it does not come without more protections. Access to prospective telecommunications data would require a higher threshold of authorisation allowing for future access to telecommunications data. That is covered in the proposed sections 176 and 180.

The need to distinguish between historical and prospective data is a reflection of the advanced technology that exists, which enables the use of telecommunications data to provide, amongst other things, location information. But it also provides, in order to reflect the increased privacy implications of access to prospective data, three more restrictive conditions, which are attached to these authorisations: (1) restricting the disclosure of prospective telecommunications data to an authorised officer of a criminal law enforcement agency for the investigation of offences which attract a maximum term of imprisonment of at least three years; (2) limiting the time frame for which an authorisation may be enforced to, under proposed section 180, 45 days for criminal law enforcement agencies and, under proposed section 176, 90 days for ASIO; and (3) requiring the authorising officer to have regard to the impact of the authorisation of the privacy of the individual concerned.

In respect of the warrant issue raised by the Democrats, we do not support the position that has been put. I will leave that to the government to deal with.