On 4 June 2019 federal police raided home of Newscorp journalist over story detailing an alleged government proposal to spy on Australians

It seems that someone in the Morrison Government may have laid a complaint........

Braidwood Times, 4 June 2019:

Federal police have raided the home of a journalist over a 2018 story detailing an alleged government proposal to spy on Australians.

Australian Federal Police officers produced a warrant to search the home, computer and mobile phone of Canberra-based News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The story in question had included images of letters between the heads of the Home Affairs and Defence departments, discussing potential new powers for the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

The powers would have allowed the ASD's cyber sleuths to monitor Australian citizens and businesses on home soil, rather than being limited to gathering intelligence on foreigners, the story said.

The AFP said the raid is in relation to "alleged unauthorised disclosure of national security information" and that no arrests are expected on Tuesday.

"Police will allege the unauthorised disclosure of these specific documents undermines Australia's national security," the agency said in a statement…...

BACKGROUND

Sunday Tasmanian, 6 May 2018, p.13:

The Federal Government has “war-gamed” scenarios where our cyber spy agency needed to be given the power to investigate Australian citizens.

Last week the Sunday Tasmanian revealed a secret plan to increase the Australian Signals Directorate’s powers to allow them to spy on Aussies.

Department bosses claimed there was “no proposal to ­increase the ASD’s powers to collect intelligence on Australians”. But letters between Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo and Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty reveal the departments of Home ­Affairs and Defence allocated staff to war game a raft of scenarios where the ASD would need to spy on Australians.

The list of scenarios were compiled in two attachments and sent to the heads of both departments under the headline “scenarios proposed by Home Affairs”.

The document explains how ASD could be used to ­disrupt “onshore and offshore online threats” such as “disrupting child exploitation networks and terrorist networks” and “illicit drug importation, money laundering and serious crimes”.

Last week’s Sunday Tasmanian exclusive has prompted calls for MPs to have greater oversight of Australia’s intelligence agencies…..

Sunday Telegraph, 29 April 2018, p.5:

Australia’s intelligence watchdog has warned the Australian Signals Directorate against any moves that would change the agency’s focus “to people and organisations ­inside Australia” instead of focusing on activities overseas.

The veiled warning came in March during a review into new laws which established the ASD as a statutory body.

In her submission, Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) Margaret Stone, a former Federal Court judge, said under the current laws ASD is not permitted to access digital information ­located inside Australia.

“Accessing data located inside Australia is properly an action that requires an ASIO or police warrant,” she said in her submission.

“Nothing in the Intelligence Services Act would allow ASD to access restricted data on a computer physically located inside Australia — even where doing so would assist in gathering intelligence or disrupting crime,” she said…..

Sunday Telegraph, 29 April 2018, p.4:

Two powerful government agencies are discussing radical new espionage powers that would see Australia’s cyber spy agency monitor Australian citizens for the first time.

Under the plan, emails, bank records and text messages of Australians could be secretly accessed by digital spies without a trace, provided the Defence and Home Affairs ministers approved.

The power grab is detailed in top secret letters between the heads of the Department of Home Affairs and Defence, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, which outline proposed new powers for Australia’s electronic spy agency — the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo first wrote to the Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty in February outlining the plan to potentially allow government hackers to “proactively disrupt and covertly remove” onshore cyber threats by “hacking into critical infrastructure”.

Under current laws the ASD — whose mission statement is “Reveal Their Secrets — Protect Our Own” — must not conduct an activity to produce intelligence on an Australian.

Instead, the Australian Federal Police and domestic spy agency ASIO have the power to investigate Australians with a warrant and can ask ASD for technical advice if they don’t have the capabilities they need.

The Attorney-General is responsible for issuing ASIO warrants, but the agency’s operations will fall under the umbrella of Home Affairs.

Under the proposal, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Defence Minister Marise Payne would tick off on orders allowing cyber spooks to target onshore threats without the country’s top law officer knowing.

Last month the proposal was ­compiled in a top secret ministerial submission signed by ASD boss Mike Burgess. The proposal outlines scenarios where Canberra-based cyber spies would use offensive tactics to “counter or disrupt cyber-enabled criminals both onshore and offshore”.

“The Department of Home Affairs advises that it is briefing the Minister for Home Affairs to write to you (Ms Payne) seeking your support for a further tranche of legislative reform to enable ASD to better support a range of Home Affairs priorities.” 

But The Sunday Telegraph understands Mr Dutton has not written to Minister Payne and no formal proposal for leglslative amendments have been presented to Government.

“The Australian Signals Directorate has not prepared ministerial advice seeking permissions to allow ASD to counter or disrupt cyber-enabled criminals onshore,” a spokesman for Ms Payne said.

An intelligence source said such ­reforms would allow cyber spies to ­secretly access digital information on Australians without detection, including financial transactions, health data and phone records.

“It would give the most powerful cyber spies the power to turn on its own citizens,” the source said.

The letter also details a proposal for coercive “step-in” powers, meaning the intelligence agency could force government agencies and ­private businesses to “comply with security measures”.

The intelligence source said ASD could be able to compel companies and government agencies to hand over data or security information…… [my yellow highlighting]

The Guardian, 25 January 2018:

Proposed changes to Australia’s national security laws that could see journalists and whistleblowers jailed for up to 20 years will “criminalise” reporting and undermine the media’s ability to act in the public interest, the nation’s major news outlets have warned. 

In a joint submission, 14 major media outlets including the ABC, Fairfax Media and News Corp said sweeping changes to national security laws proposed by the federal government would place journalists at “significant risk of jail time” for doing their jobs.

The reforms, tabled just hours after marriage equality became law in December, would increase tenfold the maximum penalty for anyone who communicates or “deals with” information which could potentially “cause harm to Australia’s interests,” where that information is obtained via a government official without authorisation.

Trump-Putin Helsinki 16 July 2018 Press Conference: the matter of a curious admission and omission

The mainstream media carried transcripts of the 16 July 2018 US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin joint press conference held in Helsinki, Finland.

Video of this press conference is available online.

There is one specific exchange between President Putin and an American reporter.

It went thus:

REPORTER: Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?

PUTIN: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S. Russia relationship back to normal.

The White House also posted a transcript of the joint press conference.

This is how that exchange between Putin and the American reporter is presented on the White House website:

Snapshot captured on 19 July 2018

The Kremlin English version transcript omits this question and answer in their entirety.

The Atlantic spoke with the reporter in question, Reuters' Jeff Mason:

But recordings of the exchange were muddled for two reasons. First, the English translation of Putin’s previous response was concluding as Mason began to speak. Second, the microphone seemed to pick up Mason’s question halfway through—making the latter half of it easier to hear. (Mason told me that he had held on to the microphone even though an official had tried to pull it away so that he could ask Putin a follow-up question. “I don’t know if they turned the sound off during the time when each of the presidents were speaking, or if it got flipped on and off. I certainly didn’t touch anything.”)

That the question could be heard clearly at the press conference is demonstrated at 6:10 mins in on this MSNBS The Last Word video.

So why the differing editing of the press conference video and transcripts by the White House, the Kremlin and media outlets. 

It is possible that many news outlets took their video and transcripts directly from the White House press office and presumed that any discrepancy was an instance of lost in translation.

The possibility also exists that the 'reshaping' of this question and answer was deliberate on the part of both the Oval Office and the Kremlin because it was realised that, albeit unintentionally, Russian President Vladimir Putin has just publicly admitted that not only did he want Donald Trump to win the 2016 US presidential campaign, he had directed Russian officials to help Trump win.

Slowly but surely Russian connections between the UK Brexit referendum campaign and the US presidential campaign are beginning to emerge

“We have concluded that there are risks in relation to the processing of personal data by many political parties. Particular concerns include: the purchasing of marketing lists and lifestyle information from data brokers without sufficient due diligence, a lack of fair processing, and use of third party data analytics companies with insufficient checks around consent….We have looked closely at the role of those who buy and sell personal data-sets in the UK. Our existing investigation of the privacy issues raised by their work has been expanded to include their activities in political processes….The investigation has identified a total of 172 organisations of interest that required engagement, of which around 30 organisations have formed the main focus of our enquiries, including political parties, data analytics companies and major social media platforms…..Similarly, we have identified a total of 285 individuals relating to our investigation.” [UK Information Commissioner’s Office, Investigation into the use of data analytics in political campaigns: Investigation update, July 2018]

Slowly but surely the Russian connections between the UK Brexit referendum campaign and the US presidential campaign are beginning to emerge.

The Guardian, 15 July 2018:

A source familiar with the FBI investigation revealed that the commissioner and her deputy spent last week with law enforcement agencies in the US including the FBI. And Denham’s deputy, James Dipple-Johnstone, confirmed to the Observer that “some of the systems linked to the investigation were accessed from IP addresses that resolve to Russia and other areas of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States]”.

It was also reported that Senator Mark Warner, vice chair of US Senate Intel Committee and Damian Collins MP, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee inquiry into “fake news”, met in Washington on or about 16 July 2018 to discuss Russian interference in both British and American democratic processes during an Atlantic Council meeting.

UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), media release, 10 July 2018:

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has today published a detailed update of her office’s investigation into the use of data analytics in political campaigns.

In March 2017, the ICO began looking into whether personal data had been misused by campaigns on both sides of the referendum on membership of the EU.

In May it launched an investigation that included political parties, data analytics companies and major social media platforms.

Today’s progress report gives details of some of the organisations and individuals under investigation, as well as enforcement actions so far.

This includes the ICO’s intention to fine Facebook a maximum £500,000 for two breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Facebook, with Cambridge Analytica, has been the focus of the investigation since February when evidence emerged that an app had been used to harvest the data of 50 million Facebook users across the world. This is now estimated at 87 million.

The ICO’s investigation concluded that Facebook contravened the law by failing to safeguard people’s information. It also found that the company failed to be transparent about how people’s data was harvested by others.

Facebook has a chance to respond to the Commissioner’s Notice of Intent, after which a final decision will be made.

Other regulatory action set out in the report comprises:

warning letters to 11 political parties and notices compelling them to agree to audits of their data protection practices;

an Enforcement Notice for SCL Elections Ltd to compel it to deal properly with a subject access request from Professor David Carroll;

a criminal prosecution for SCL Elections Ltd for failing to properly deal with the ICO’s Enforcement Notice;

an Enforcement Notice for Aggregate IQ to stop processing retained data belonging to UK citizens;

a Notice of Intent to take regulatory action against data broker Emma’s Diary (Lifecycle Marketing (Mother and Baby) Ltd); and

audits of the main credit reference companies and Cambridge University Psychometric Centre.

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said:

“We are at a crossroads. Trust and confidence in the integrity of our democratic processes risk being disrupted because the average voter has little idea of what is going on behind the scenes.

“New technologies that use data analytics to micro-target people give campaign groups the ability to connect with individual voters. But this cannot be at the expense of transparency, fairness and compliance with the law.

She added:

“Fines and prosecutions punish the bad actors, but my real goal is to effect change and restore trust and confidence in our democratic system.”

A second, partner report, titled Democracy Disrupted? Personal information and political influence, sets out findings and recommendations arising out of the 14-month investigation.

Among the ten recommendations is a call for the Government to introduce a statutory Code of Practice for the use of personal data in political campaigns.

Ms Denham has also called for an ethical pause to allow Government, Parliament, regulators, political parties, online platforms and the public to reflect on their responsibilities in the era of big data before there is a greater expansion in the use of new technologies.

She said:

“People cannot have control over their own data if they don’t know or understand how it is being used. That’s why greater and genuine transparency about the use of data analytics is vital.”

In addition, the ICO commissioned research from the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the independent thinktank DEMOS. Its report, also published today, examines current and emerging trends in how data is used in political campaigns, how use of technology is changing and how it may evolve in the next two to five years. 

The investigation, one of the largest of its kind by a Data Protection Authority, remains ongoing. The 40-strong investigation team is pursuing active lines of enquiry and reviewing a considerable amount of material retrieved from servers and equipment.

The interim progress report has been produced to inform the work of the DCMS’s Select Committee into Fake News.

The next phase of the ICO’s work is expected to be concluded by the end of October 2018.

The Washington Post, 28 June 2018:

BRISTOL, England — On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks, a wealthy British businessman, sat down at the palatial residence of the Russian ambassador to London for a lunch of wild halibut and Belevskaya pastila apple sweets accompanied by Russian white wine.

Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit, the campaign to disentangle the United Kingdom from the European Union that had earned a jaw-dropping victory at the polls two months earlier.

Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Donald Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the United States. A major Brexit supporter, Stephen K. Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.

Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.

Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, a hard-partying lot who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign have captured the interest of investigators in the United Kingdom and the United States, including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Vice News, 11 June 2018:

Yakovenko is already on the radar of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, after he was named in the indictment of ex-Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos….

Banks, along with close friend and former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, was among the very first overseas political figures to meet Trump after his surprise victory in November 2016.

It also emerged over the weekend that Banks passed contact information for Trump’s transition team to the Russians.

Prime Minister Abbott's plan still permits an outrageous attack on Australian press freedom

Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance 16 March 2015:

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union and industry advocate for Australia’s journalists, cannot support the Prime Minister’s proposal for government “agencies to obtain a warrant in order to access a journalist’s metadata for the purpose of identifying a source”.

The Prime Minister’s plan still permits an outrageous attack on press freedom and would have a chilling effect on journalism in Australia leading to whistleblowers being fearful that they risk exposure if they seek to reveal instances of wrongdoing, corruption, waste, illegal activity and dishonesty.

MEAA believes the lack of understanding of what is at stake requires the proposed Parliamentary Inquiry into press freedom concerns to go ahead in order the concerns of journalists and media organisations are heard and acknowledged by MPs.

MEAA CEO Paul Murphy said: “What needs to be understood is that no journalist, anywhere, can ever allow the identity of a confidential source to become known – that is a guiding principle of journalism the world over. It is a principle acknowledged by every Australian journalist in clause 3 of MEAA’s Journalist Code of Ethics: ‘Where confidences are accepted, respect them in all circumstances’.”

Murphy added: “Accessing metadata to hunt down journalists’ sources, regardless of the procedures used, threatens press freedom and democracy. It means important stories in the public interest can be silenced before they ever become known, and whistleblowers can be persecuted and prosecuted. It means journalists can be jailed for simply doing their job.

“The so-called ‘safeguards’ recommended by the Parliamentary Committee were no safeguards at all because they still allowed government agencies to hunt down journalists’ sources. Similarly, the Prime Minister’s proposal also allows those agencies to trawl through a journalist’s metadata in order to expose a confidential source. Putting a hurdle like a warrant in the way will not change the outcome: using a journalists’ metadata to pursue a whistleblower. Why does the Government not understand that no journalist can breach their fundamental ethical obligation to never allow the identity of a confidential source to be revealed?”

MEAA has consistently explained this principle of press freedom in every submission to Parliament on the national security laws. MEAA also repeated those concerns on Thursday last week when it was visited by representatives from the Prime Minister’s, Attorney-General’s and Communications Minister’s offices and the AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin. During that meeting, the AFP confirmed it has been repeatedly asked to hunt down journalists’ sources by accessing journalists’ metadata and he confirmed that it is doing so. The Data Retention Bill will simply formalise these activities with no regard to the press freedom implications and presumably encourage at least 20 government agencies to go trawling through journalists’ metadata.

Murphy said: “Journalists cannot allow the relationship they have with a confidential source to be breached, under any circumstance – that is their ethical responsibility. If the surveillance continues and is formally adopted in the Data Retention Bill with or without a warrant, then journalists will be forced to use the tools of counter-surveillance such as anonymisation and encryption to protect their sources. It remains our fundamental position that this Bill should not be proceed at all and that the press freedom concerns of the previous two tranches of national security laws must be addressed.”

In an interesting twist, the Australian Federal Police issued a media release in which it admitted that police already request access to journalists’ metadata:

Fact check: Use of metadata in relation to journalists

Release Date: Tuesday, March 17 2015, 02:34 PM

In a statement released yesterday, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) claimed that AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin confirmed the AFP had “been repeatedly asked to hunt down journalists’ sources by accessing journalists’ metadata and he confirmed that it is doing so. The Data Retention Bill will simply formalise these activities with no regard to the press freedom implications and presumably encourage at least 20 government agencies to go trawling through journalists’ metadata.”

This is inaccurate and a distortion of the comments made.

Commissioner Colvin said that over the past 18 months, the AFP has received 13 referrals relating to the alleged unauthorised disclosure of Commonwealth information in breach of section 70 of the Crimes Act.

This offence specifically criminalises the activity of Commonwealth officials who have released Commonwealth information in contravention of their obligations, not journalists.

In the overwhelming majority of these investigations, no need was identified to conduct a metadata telecommunications inquiry on a journalist. AFP requests for accessing a journalist’s metadata are rare. [my red bolding]

On  19 March 2015 the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014 was passed by the House of Representative. Only three MPs voted against it - The Greens'Adam Bandt and Independents Andrew Wilkie and Cathy McGowan.

 Image from The Guardian 19 March 2015

Australian government agencies and a registered charity trawled letters and parcels 10,002 times in 2013-14

The Age 13 November 2014:

Australia Post disclosed confidential information to law enforcement, security and other government agencies more than 10,000 times  in 2013-14, an increase of 25 per cent over the past four years. 

According to statistics released by the postal corporation, "specially protected" information, which includes information about letters and parcels and other private client information was provided to government agencies by Australia Post on 5635 occasions – more than twice the number four years ago.

Federal government investigators accessing specially protected information include the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, the Australian Customs Service, the Australian Taxation Office, Centrelink, Medicare and the Child Support Agency. 

Victorian and Queensland police as well as the NSW Crime Commission and the Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission also received such private information. 

Postal information that is not "specially protected", including names and addresses on the outside of letters and parcels, was disclosed by Australia Post on another 4367 occasions. 

Government agencies accessing this postal "metadata" include the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and the federal departments of agriculture, environment, defence, foreign affairs and trade, health and ageing.

State police and anti-corruption agencies, state revenue offices, consumer affairs, workplace and environmental regulators as well as the RSPCA also accessed the information…..

The total of 10,002 disclosures in 2013-14 was 5 per cent higher than in the previous year, despite a 4.8 per cent decline in the volume of letters delivered by Australia Post. 

Only 19 disclosures of postal information were made to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.  This figure for 2013-14 is down from 31 disclosures in the previous year and is the lowest in a decade…… 

How many NSW North Coast businesses, post offices, police stations and local councils use Internet-enabled security cameras capable of being exploited?

When you walk into your local supermarket to pick up some breakfast cereal or the nearest council chambers to pay your rates do you ever wonder just how benign that security camera monitoring your movements actually is?

Have you any idea if the security camera you are thinking of installing at your business premises or above your front door at home is Internet-enabled?

What about that high-tech baby monitor by the cot?

Haven’t given it a thought? Well, perhaps you should.

These three statements were taken from the websites of companies which supply security cameras for homes, offices, shops etc.:

For highly reliable CCTV surveillance in any conditions, only trust professionally installed and tested products. Protect your property and assets with this trusted visual deterrent that gives you full monitoring and recording facilities. Watch from a central location, or remotely anywhere in the world via an internet enabled device.

Monitor your home or office with high quality MJPEG streaming video. Access, monitor and record up to 16 cameras from the Internet.

TRENDnet’s security team understands that video from some TRENDnet IP SecurView cameras may be accessed online in real time. Upon awareness of the issue, TRENDnet initiated immediate actions to correct and publish updated firmware which resolves the vulnerability.

It would appear from just these thee quotes that security flaws in Internet-enabled security cameras are not only possible but can be exploited at will and, video footage either live streamed or video snapshots posted on publicly available websites.

This potentially means administrative or sales staff and ratepayers or customers may at any time find live images of themselves beamed around the world - as would anyone who had such a camera set up inside their own home.

Cameras with a pan/tilt/zoom function just add to the fun to be had by anyone taking advantage of these security flaws.

If any of these surveillance systems are linked to audio, the privacy issues multiply because your conversations might also fly around the world for the listening pleasure of strangers. 

On 8 November 2014 The Canberra Times reported that; UNSW's Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre co-convenor David Vaile said people should think twice before using internet-connected security devices. "This is a great illustration of the illusion of security coming from surveillance and in fact you're getting the opposite, you're getting increase risk of unwanted and possibly quite hostile misuse of your information,"…

Currently over 900 Australian security camera feeds (along with many of their default passwords) are currently available at one website alone, including a 4 channel Hikvision camera at Evans Head and a 1 channel Foscam camera at Lismore.

Loved that stuffed animal in a yellow outfit, Evans Head! The office mascot perhaps?

Here is a list of just some of the vulnerable security cameras brands and associated software systems:

TRENDnet

D-Link

Cisco

Linksys

IQ Vision/IQeye

3S Vision

HD Network Speed Dome

TP Link

Vivotek

Hikvision

Foscam

Milestone

Axis

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis' data retention spin ignores a Court of Justice of the European Union judgment

At a press conference on 30 October 2014 Federal Attorney-General George Brandis stated:

Data retention regimes currently operate in some 29 countries including most European countries and the United States. I want to stress, as Mr Turnbull stressed in his second reading speech, that this bill confers no new powers on ASIO, the AFP or on law enforcement agencies. They can already access metadata under the existing law; the purpose of the bill is to establish a common, industry wide standard for metadata retention and to ensure that metadata continues to be retained so that the investigative capabilities of the intelligence agencies and the police are not degraded.

In making such a statement Brandis ignores four subjects – the right to privacy of the ordinary individual, the level of concern existing in Europe in relation to data retention, the issue of proportional response and, the fact the European Court of Justice had addressed the first three subjects when rejecting the validity of European Union Directive 2006/24/EC & amending Directive 2002/58/EC which sought to force telecommunication corporations to retain metadata for six months.

The history behind C-293/12 - Digital Rights Ireland and Seitlinger and Others (English court transcript)  according to Practical Law:

In 2010, the Irish High Court granted a motion by campaign group Digital Rights Ireland to refer to the ECJ a number of questions concerning the compatibility of the Data Retention Directive with Article 5(4) of the TEU, and with certain fundamental rights protected by the Charter.

In 2012, a number of different applicants, including the state government of Carinthia and over 11,000 individual applicants, brought an action before the Austrian Constitutional Court claiming that the Austrian law transposing the Directive infringed their rights under Article 8 of the Charter. Both courts referred questions regarding the validity of the Directive to the ECJ, which joined them in 2013.

The Irish High Court referred the following questions to the ECJ:

Is the restriction on the rights of the plaintiff arising from the requirements in Articles 3, 4 and 6 of the Directive incompatible with Article 5(4) of the TEU in that it is disproportionate or unnecessary or inappropriate to achieve the legitimate aims of:

ensuring that certain data are available for the purposes of investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime; and/or

ensuring the proper functioning of the internal market of the EU?

In particular, the High Court enquired whether the Directive was compatible with Articles 7, 8 and 11 of the Charter and Article 8 of the Convention.

To what extent do the Treaties, and specifically the principle of loyal co-operation, require a national court to enquire into, and assess, the compatibility of the national implementing measures for the Directive with the protections afforded by the Charter, including Article 7 of the Charter (as informed by Article 8 of the Convention)?

The Austrian Constitutional Court referred the following question to the ECJ:

Are Articles 3 to 7 of the Directive compatible with Articles 7, 8 and 11 of the Charter?

In addition, the court referred a number of questions concerning the interpretation of the EU Treaties, which are not relevant for the purpose of this development.

In December 2013, Advocate General Cruz Villalón gave an opinion in which he concluded that the Data Retention Directive is, as a whole, incompatible with Article 52(1) of the Charter, since the limitations on the exercise of fundamental rights it contains are not accompanied by the necessary principles for governing the guarantees needed to regulate access to the data and their use (see Legal update, Advocate General finds Data Retention Directive incompatible with right to privacy). He recommended that the ECJ find that the Directive is invalid, but that the effects of that finding should be suspended pending adoption by the EU of the measures necessary to remedy the invalidity.

Excerpt from the Court of Justice of the European Union media release of 8 April 2014 with regard to the judgment declaring the data retention directives to be invalid without suspending effect of its findings:

The Court observes first of all that the data to be retained make it possible, in particular, (1) to know the identity of the person with whom a subscriber or registered user has communicated and by what means, (2) to identify the time of the communication as well as the place from which that communication took place and (3) to know the frequency of the communications of the subscriber or registered user with certain persons during a given period. Those data, taken as a whole, may provide very precise information on the private lives of the persons whose data are retained, such as the habits of everyday life, permanent or temporary places of residence, daily or other movements, activities carried out, social relationships and the social environments frequented.

The Court takes the view that, by requiring the retention of those data and by allowing the competent national authorities to access those data, the directive interferes in a particularly serious manner with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data. Furthermore, the fact that data are retained and subsequently used without the subscriber or registered user being informed is likely to generate in the persons concerned a feeling that their private lives are the subject of constant surveillance…

Court of Justice of the European Union declares the Data Retention Directive to be invalid (April 2014) by clarencegirl

I spy with my little eye.....

Apparently NSW Police has been spending part of its annual budgets on surveillance malware programs which will remotely infect the computers/mobile devices of its preferred target individuals.

In today’s money that is well over $2 million for the five licenses which are currently active.

Wikileaks Spy Files

The company FinFisher (part of the Gamma Group headquaqtered in Munich, Germany) obligingly supplies this description of FinSpy:

While FinIntrusion allows NSW Police to do the following:

The Australian Federal Police will neither confirm nor deny that is also using this malware.

On 6 August 2014 Netzpolitik reported that:

A hacker claims to have hacked a network of the surveillance technology company Gamma International and has published 40 gigabytes of internal data. A Twitter account has published release notes, price lists – and source code. Malware researchers and human rights activists welcome the publication, Gamma itself refuses to comment.

In November 2012 a public service announcement prepared by the US Government Internet Crime Complaint Center identified FinFisher as supplying malware and spyware capable of taking over the components of a mobile device. When installed the mobile device can be remotely controlled and monitored no matter where the Target is located. FinFisher can be easily transmitted to a Smartphone when the user visits a specific web link or opens a text message masquerading as a system update.

Gamma Group’s Martin Münch/Muench with exploit seller VULPEN’s CEO & Head of Research Chaouki Bekrar

July 2014 

Source: Netspolitik

Despite the police having accquired a number of new 'toys', Australian government requests for user data held by Google Inc continue: