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                Date: 2001-02-04
                 
                 
                AU: Totale Telekom-Ueberwachung in Zahlen
                
                 
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      Laut offiziöser Aussage der Australian Communications  
Authority wurden 1999 und 2000 von den Telekoms,  
Handeynetzbetreibern und ISPs in AU pro Arbeitstag knapp  
4000 Anfragen der gesetzlich ermächtigten Behörden nach  
Verbindungsdaten [wer mit wem wann wie lange und von wo  
kommuniziert] positiv erledigt. In keinem Fall war dafür der  
Bescheid eines ordentlichen Gerichts notwendig, die  
Anfragen der Nachrichtendienste sind in dieser Zahl nicht  
enthalten.  
 
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Relayed by Julian Assange <proff@iq.org> 
 via aucrypto@suburbia.net 
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BRENDAN NICHOLSON  THE AGE Sunday 4 February 2001 
 
Watchdog groups are demanding urgent changes to a  
system that last year allowed police and other government  
agencies to access confidential phone records on more than  
a million occasions without search warrants. 
 
The Australian Communications Authority has confirmed that  
telecommunications companies passed on information to law- 
enforcement and other government agencies 998,548 times  
in 1999-2000 - a move condemned as wholesale invasion of  
privacy. 
 
The extraordinary access to phone records does not include  
information given to the Australian Security Intelligence  
Organisation, which is believed to be substantial and which  
the agency is not obliged to disclose. 
 
The information revealed included telephone accounts,  
numbers dialled, the time calls were made and their duration,  
and use of the Internet. These disclosures were made at a  
rate of more than 19,000 a week, or nearly 4000 on any  
working day. 
 
This process is separate from telephone interception, or  
phone tapping, which has also increased dramatically in the  
past three years, but which requires law-enforcement officers  
to obtain a warrant. 
 
The scant information about the process was released by the  
communications authority in a written answer to a question  
asked by the Federal Opposition during Senate hearings. 
 
But the ease and frequency with which police and other  
agencies are combing through phone records triggered  
serious concerns about the system's lack of privacy  
safeguards. 
 
Mr Chris Maxwell, QC, president of Liberty Victory, the  
Victorian Council for Civil Liberties, said the figures revealed a  
wholesale invasion of privacy. "People's phone records are  
their private affair. No one else should have access to them  
except in exceptional circumstances. 
 
"Police access to phone records has apparently become a  
matter of routine." 
 
Mr Maxwell said the Federal Government should take action  
immediately to find how and why this had occurred and to  
change the rules so that access was limited to cases of  
serious crime. 
... 
Tim Dixon, chairman of the Australian Privacy Foundation,  
set up in response to public concerns about the Australia  
Card in 1987, said a colossal amount of information was  
being collected. 
... 
"It sounds as though they are using it as an ordinary person  
uses directory service." 
 
 
Mr Dixon suggested that an ombudsman could audit the  
process by randomly selecting 1000 examples of access to  
information and examining why it was sought and whether it  
was justified. 
... 
"But at the moment there is no mechanism like that, and  
given the enormous number of occasions when information is  
being obtained I can't imagine that there is any restraint on  
using those powers. 
 
"It could clearly be abused and none of us would know." 
 
Democrats privacy spokeswoman Senator Natasha Stott- 
Despoja said she was astounded that such a vast amount of  
information was being handed over without adequate  
safeguards.  
... 
The Telecommunications Act of 1997 allows  
telecommunications companies to release information to  
federal and state law-enforcement agencies without seeing a  
warrant if the agencies satisfy them that disclosure is  
"reasonably necessary". 
 
Ninety-eight per cent of the disclosures were made by  
Telstra, Cable and Wireless Optus and Vodafone. 
 
Labor frontbencher Laurie Brereton said it was clear from the  
massive number of disclosures that access to records was  
"a matter of casual and routine procedure". 
 
The system could also allow whistleblowers to be hunted  
down and persecuted, he said. 
 
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/02/04/FFX73146QIC.html  
 
 
 
 
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edited by Harkank 
published on: 2001-02-04 
comments to office@quintessenz.at
                   
                  
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