George Brandis Warns Aussies To “Calibrate” Attitudes To Privacy After Paris


As he did in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings – when he displayed a worryingly limited understanding of what metadata is – George Brandis has once again told Australians that we should lower our expectations of personal privacy. 
The Attorney-General’s latest comments, made in an interview with the Nine Network, concerned the rise of Islamic extremism in light of the recent, deadly attacks in Paris.
When asked if Australia is now at war, he said: “Absolutely. ISIL have declared war on us. They have been completely unambiguous in their intention. We would be fools not to take them at their word and to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our civilisation.”
In a separate interview with the Seven Network, Brandis was asked about the implications of this, and said that Australians will need to “calibrate their attitudes” on privacy.
“There will be occasions in which we will have to accept greater limitations, greater impediments to personal privacy,” he continued.
During Brandis’ time as Attorney-General, Australia has passed laws that mandate the storage and collection of phone and internet records as well as location information, making the data accessible, without warrants, to law enforcement agencies. 
Though the deadline for Australian telecommunications companies to be compliant with metadata laws was October 13, that date came and went with Telsra as one of the few major telcos, if not the only one, to have an approved data retention plan. 
When Brandis says “greater impediments to personal privacy”, it’s unclear whether he’s speaking in relation to the tightening of our still-young metadata laws, or people being stopped on the street and asked for their papers, or something else entirely.
Either way:
Earlier this year, privacy activist Edward Snowden spoke out against Australia’s metadata laws and warned of the ongoing erosion of personal liberty we face, in which communications are collected in advance of criminal suspicion.
He said:
“What this means is they are watching everybody all the time. They’re collecting information and they’re just putting it in buckets that they can then search through not only locally, not only in Australia, but they can then share this with foreign intelligences services. They can trawl through this information in the same way. Whether or not you’re doing anything wrong you’re being watched.”
via SBS News / ZDNet
Photo: Scott Barbour via Getty Images

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