6 ms·

Australian local council intercepted phone, email data to hunt litterbugs

69 points by maskofsanity 13y ago

gregsq 13y ago
There is an upcoming referendum in Australia which seeks to take this level of government into the budget allocation process of the federal system. If this happens, all functions of local government have the characteristic of affecting federal taxing powers. Therefore all actions and provisions by local government will have a characteristic that provides the authority to access metadata for all citizens on the single signature of the enquirers supervisor. The enquirer can be any paid employee of the council who has a working title. Any license, fee, ambiguity on any bylaw compliance, planning decision and so on can, because it has a fiduciary component, lead to a legally performed metadata query on any citizen. And the citizenry I have met are, I am afraid, oblivious to these matters.
- jacalata 13y ago
  I have literally not heard of a coming referendum at all, although in in the states and not necessarily current. Got any more details?
  - gregsq 13y ago
    Sure. Here are some links to follow. http://www.gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/resources/referendums/2013-local-government-referendum-faqs http://www.gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/resources/referendums/2013-l... http://www.councilreferendum.com.au/ http://www.councilreferendum.com.au/ http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/About_the_House_News/Latest_News/CRLG-11122012 http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representati... As I've alluded to, the element of this that pertains to privacy is the incorporation into the Australian Constitution of Council fiduciary compliance. It has been law since 2007 in Australia that in any question impacting the federal taxing power authority conferred by the constitution, such queries can be made as a matter if course, as long as permission is obtained from a single signing supervisor.
    - nl 13y ago
      Can you put some of that in plain English, and provide some references please? It has been law since 2007 in Australia that in any question impacting the federal taxing power authority conferred by the constitution, such queries can be made as a matter if course, as long as permission is obtained from a single signing supervisor. What exactly does "federal taxing power authority" mean, and under what possible interpretation does that mean that a body funded by the federal government suddenly gets the power to subpoena phone records and tap email? There are plenty of other federally funded bodies at (AFAIK) don't have that power. Or maybe I'm wrong, and agencies like Screen Australia actually can do that? (Not that I support this referendum, but that's for different reasons)
      - gregsq 13y ago
        Protection of the public revenue is the clause in the telecommunications act 1997 that the Australian Tax Office and Job Centre investigators often rely on. Access to metadata does not require a warrant. In some cases, telcos can provide information to allowed agencies even without certification. I'm fairly convinced that local governments will be motivated to protect their own revenue with methods that are specifically designed to protect the public revenue. Already we are seeing some councils using these methods. The number of accesses must be reported, and these reports form the basis of recent news stories on this subject. It remains to be seen whether there are any real constraints on the volume of queries when and if local governments are directly funded by the federal government. By federal taxing powers I mean what is generally described in [1] There is history in the relationship between the Federal and local governments. Reference the Whitlam governments attempt at bringing local government under federal control, which failed, and the Fraser government etc [2] The COAG meetings provide the mechanism for state funding, through which local councils currently are funded. There is one local government representative present at COAG meetings [3][4] Part 13 of the Telecommunications Act and access to metadata.[5]. The amendments relevant to warrants for access to content of stored electronic communications and the Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Act 2006 are in [6] 1. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_basis_of_taxation_in_Australia http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_basis_of_taxat.... 2. http://sydney.edu.au/law/cru/documents/2013/CRU_Report_3_%20Local_Government.pdf http://sydney.edu.au/law/cru/documents/2013/CRU_Report_3_%20... 3. http://www.coag.gov.au/the_federal_financial_relations_framework http://www.coag.gov.au/the_federal_financial_relations_frame... 4. http://www.coag.gov.au/reform_agenda http://www.coag.gov.au/reform_agenda 5. http://www.pacificprivacy.com.au/Government%20Surveillance%20in%20Australia%20v6.pdf http://www.pacificprivacy.com.au/Government%20Surveillance%2... 6. http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2006A00040/3bf9cedc-87c1-4c8c-895a-83cf7831b278 http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2006A00040/3bf9cedc-87c1-4...
nwh 13y ago
This is part of the problem really; feature creep. Very quickly you're just scrounging around looking for crimes to charge people with.
- haakon 13y ago
  I believe the term is mission creep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_creep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_creep
oohmeplums 13y ago
Wow, how is it even possible for local councils to do this? Given how dodgy local councils appear to be ... wow. How monumentally fucked up.
- ra 13y ago
  Absolutely. The only way any authority should ever be able to wiretap or get phone / internet records is with a warrant signed by a judge because there is a reasonable suspicion that the individual has committed a crime. Even then this should only be available for law enforcement, not local fucking councils! How did we get into this mess?
  - goatforce5 13y ago
    The article is really unclear, but to me it sounds like they were doing reverse phone lookups. Illegal advertising - get the details of the number on the poster. Unregistered pets - maybe they have an 'if found please call ...' tag on the pet, but no pet registration. People dumping stuff illegally - if you were dumping general household/office waste, you'd probably have letters or bills with your address on it already, but I can think of scenarios where they might only have your email address to go on.
  - vacri 13y ago
    The reasons why they're seeking the numbers are law enforcement reasons. Dumping rubbish and having unregistered pets violate by-laws. Wiretaps (ie: obtaining content) do require a warrant, and in the state of Victoria, where this is, half of all such applications for warrants are rejected by the magistrate. Getting the name and address of the owner of a phone number is a humdrum law enforcement issue, and really councils should have that power. Getting the list of calls made or where emails have been sent is a more serious violation of privacy (instead of "who owns this?" it's "what do they do with it?"), and I imagine that there's simply a legal loophole there. The article has an amazing lack of detail and follow-through.
- csirac2 13y ago
  Whilst I fully support local councils generally - I've seen how ruinous centralized decision-making can be for small/remote communities - there are indeed far too many local councils which seem overrun either by incompetents who are easily exploited, or worse: petty, corrupt, back-stabbing psychopaths who abuse process against people and small businesses with competing interests. Even if we pretend for 10ms that surveillance is even remotely justifiable and is the only option to deal with pet ownership and littering (!), I am immediately concerned about what accountability and oversight measures are or aren't in place. Local councils are already notoriously rife with corruption, incompetence and abuse of process - that it's so easy for that sort of culture to breed indicates fundamental problems which desperately need addressing before this kind of power could possibly be entertained for such weak institutions... Astounding.
bigiain 13y ago
And while Snowden and Manning had security clearances and Official Secrets Laws holding them accountable for mis-using the data they had access too, I wonder if anyone's even asking who at the local council level has access to this sort of data, and what policies/procedures/systems/agreements/accountability is in place here? Who wants to bet there's nothing stopping the local dog catcher or garbage collection manager from requesting whatever they can plausably justify - then downloading it onto a usb drive and walking out of the office with it?
- toyg 13y ago
  It might be a way to make civil service more attractive to stalkers. If I were anybody's ex-wife with a messy divorce and/or a restraining order, I'd be very opposed to all this.
nicholassmith 13y ago
I like how under the guise of protecting us from terrorism they're now protecting us from the most evil of evil crimes. There was a mild outrage about 5 years ago in the UK when a few councils were caught using RIPA laws (what GCHQ is currently claiming to be protected by) for all sorts of fun things. Like dog poop [1], ice lolly bribes [2] and so on. I feel 100% safer knowing that surveillance is used to tackle all these huge crimes. [1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7369543.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7369543.stm [2]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053039/Council-use-anti-terror-laws-spy-binmen-accused-accepting-strawberry-pop-bribe-away-trade-waste.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053039/Council-use-...
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Add to that UK police using terrorist powers to harass... sorry, stop and search kids who dare to be out in public. Oh, I also believe the police can use the terror excuse to search homes with out a proper warrant. Most people who are treated like this don't even know why. They just get quoted the act section number. Something like, "we are searching you / your home under section xyz." No mention of the terror laws. This is exactly why we should be very careful about giving sweeping powers to authorities under the guise of "terror".
  - cmdkeen 13y ago
    The UK did away with S44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 precisely because there was backlash against the mass use of groundless searches. What was especially galling is that the UK has pretty broad search powers anyway based on reasonable suspicion, so anyone choosing a S44 search was basically admitting they didn't expect to find anything.
- retube 13y ago
  I fully agree with the dog poop. I don't care what measures the authorities take to hunt down and hopefully exterminate owners that leave dog shit all over the place. Utterly abhorrent, selfish, irresponsible and dangerous. These owners are a menace.
DigitalSea 13y ago
I am speechless. As an Australian (from Queensland though) I am absolutely shocked because I know from repeated experience as do many that local councils are staffed and run by usually highly incompetent people. How is it a council is able to access such information in the first place? Someone needs to demand some answers. Would hate for those criminals breaking the law with their unregistered pets considering it costs like maximum $80 per year to register a pet...
readme 13y ago
It sounds like spin. >“Retrieving a telephone subscriber’s name and address for an investigation into an offence is an important tool," she said. That was the reply from the spokeswoman and the article provides no accusations of any further "data interception" behavior. If I didn't know better, I'd say this article is trying to characterize caller id/the phonebook as "intercepting data", sure, it's technically accurate, but the words "caller id" are a lot less scary.
- ryusage 13y ago
  I remember a friend was up in arms a couple years ago about their phone number being exposed on Facebook. When I pointed out that's exactly what the phone book had done for decades, he suddenly didn't care much.
vicbrooker 13y ago
This seems to be the source, it has a little bit more information: http://www.wyndhamweekly.com.au/story/1628329/experts-slam-wyndham-councils-data-snooping/?cs=1553 http://www.wyndhamweekly.com.au/story/1628329/experts-slam-w...
hobolobo 13y ago
'If you build it, they will come' works for both baseball diamonds and surveillance systems, it seems.
davidbanham 13y ago
I'm calling BS on this. To me it looks like the council sees an illegally posted advertisement with a phone number on it, then seeks the name and address of the owner of that phone number. It looks like the journalist is then reaching to connect this with that new "metadata" word they've been hearing so much about.

69 points by maskofsanity 13y ago

There is an upcoming referendum in Australia which seeks to take this level of government into the budget allocation process of the federal system. If this happens, all functions of local government have the characteristic of affecting federal taxing powers. Therefore all actions and provisions by local government will have a characteristic that provides the authority to access metadata for all citizens on the single signature of the enquirers supervisor. The enquirer can be any paid employee of the council who has a working title. Any license, fee, ambiguity on any bylaw compliance, planning decision and so on can, because it has a fiduciary component, lead to a legally performed metadata query on any citizen. And the citizenry I have met are, I am afraid, oblivious to these matters.

jacalata 13y ago
I have literally not heard of a coming referendum at all, although in in the states and not necessarily current. Got any more details?
- gregsq 13y ago
  Sure. Here are some links to follow. http://www.gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/resources/referendums/2013-local-government-referendum-faqs http://www.gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/resources/referendums/2013-l... http://www.councilreferendum.com.au/ http://www.councilreferendum.com.au/ http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/About_the_House_News/Latest_News/CRLG-11122012 http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representati... As I've alluded to, the element of this that pertains to privacy is the incorporation into the Australian Constitution of Council fiduciary compliance. It has been law since 2007 in Australia that in any question impacting the federal taxing power authority conferred by the constitution, such queries can be made as a matter if course, as long as permission is obtained from a single signing supervisor.
  - nl 13y ago
    Can you put some of that in plain English, and provide some references please? It has been law since 2007 in Australia that in any question impacting the federal taxing power authority conferred by the constitution, such queries can be made as a matter if course, as long as permission is obtained from a single signing supervisor. What exactly does "federal taxing power authority" mean, and under what possible interpretation does that mean that a body funded by the federal government suddenly gets the power to subpoena phone records and tap email? There are plenty of other federally funded bodies at (AFAIK) don't have that power. Or maybe I'm wrong, and agencies like Screen Australia actually can do that? (Not that I support this referendum, but that's for different reasons)
    - gregsq 13y ago
      Protection of the public revenue is the clause in the telecommunications act 1997 that the Australian Tax Office and Job Centre investigators often rely on. Access to metadata does not require a warrant. In some cases, telcos can provide information to allowed agencies even without certification. I'm fairly convinced that local governments will be motivated to protect their own revenue with methods that are specifically designed to protect the public revenue. Already we are seeing some councils using these methods. The number of accesses must be reported, and these reports form the basis of recent news stories on this subject. It remains to be seen whether there are any real constraints on the volume of queries when and if local governments are directly funded by the federal government. By federal taxing powers I mean what is generally described in [1] There is history in the relationship between the Federal and local governments. Reference the Whitlam governments attempt at bringing local government under federal control, which failed, and the Fraser government etc [2] The COAG meetings provide the mechanism for state funding, through which local councils currently are funded. There is one local government representative present at COAG meetings [3][4] Part 13 of the Telecommunications Act and access to metadata.[5]. The amendments relevant to warrants for access to content of stored electronic communications and the Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Act 2006 are in [6] 1. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_basis_of_taxation_in_Australia http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_basis_of_taxat.... 2. http://sydney.edu.au/law/cru/documents/2013/CRU_Report_3_%20Local_Government.pdf http://sydney.edu.au/law/cru/documents/2013/CRU_Report_3_%20... 3. http://www.coag.gov.au/the_federal_financial_relations_framework http://www.coag.gov.au/the_federal_financial_relations_frame... 4. http://www.coag.gov.au/reform_agenda http://www.coag.gov.au/reform_agenda 5. http://www.pacificprivacy.com.au/Government%20Surveillance%20in%20Australia%20v6.pdf http://www.pacificprivacy.com.au/Government%20Surveillance%2... 6. http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2006A00040/3bf9cedc-87c1-4c8c-895a-83cf7831b278 http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2006A00040/3bf9cedc-87c1-4...

nwh 13y ago

This is part of the problem really; feature creep. Very quickly you're just scrounging around looking for crimes to charge people with.

haakon 13y ago
I believe the term is mission creep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_creep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_creep

oohmeplums 13y ago

Wow, how is it even possible for local councils to do this? Given how dodgy local councils appear to be ... wow. How monumentally fucked up.

ra 13y ago
Absolutely. The only way any authority should ever be able to wiretap or get phone / internet records is with a warrant signed by a judge because there is a reasonable suspicion that the individual has committed a crime. Even then this should only be available for law enforcement, not local fucking councils! How did we get into this mess?
- goatforce5 13y ago
  The article is really unclear, but to me it sounds like they were doing reverse phone lookups. Illegal advertising - get the details of the number on the poster. Unregistered pets - maybe they have an 'if found please call ...' tag on the pet, but no pet registration. People dumping stuff illegally - if you were dumping general household/office waste, you'd probably have letters or bills with your address on it already, but I can think of scenarios where they might only have your email address to go on.
- vacri 13y ago
  The reasons why they're seeking the numbers are law enforcement reasons. Dumping rubbish and having unregistered pets violate by-laws. Wiretaps (ie: obtaining content) do require a warrant, and in the state of Victoria, where this is, half of all such applications for warrants are rejected by the magistrate. Getting the name and address of the owner of a phone number is a humdrum law enforcement issue, and really councils should have that power. Getting the list of calls made or where emails have been sent is a more serious violation of privacy (instead of "who owns this?" it's "what do they do with it?"), and I imagine that there's simply a legal loophole there. The article has an amazing lack of detail and follow-through.
csirac2 13y ago
Whilst I fully support local councils generally - I've seen how ruinous centralized decision-making can be for small/remote communities - there are indeed far too many local councils which seem overrun either by incompetents who are easily exploited, or worse: petty, corrupt, back-stabbing psychopaths who abuse process against people and small businesses with competing interests. Even if we pretend for 10ms that surveillance is even remotely justifiable and is the only option to deal with pet ownership and littering (!), I am immediately concerned about what accountability and oversight measures are or aren't in place. Local councils are already notoriously rife with corruption, incompetence and abuse of process - that it's so easy for that sort of culture to breed indicates fundamental problems which desperately need addressing before this kind of power could possibly be entertained for such weak institutions... Astounding.

bigiain 13y ago

And while Snowden and Manning had security clearances and Official Secrets Laws holding them accountable for mis-using the data they had access too, I wonder if anyone's even asking who at the local council level has access to this sort of data, and what policies/procedures/systems/agreements/accountability is in place here? Who wants to bet there's nothing stopping the local dog catcher or garbage collection manager from requesting whatever they can plausably justify - then downloading it onto a usb drive and walking out of the office with it?

toyg 13y ago
It might be a way to make civil service more attractive to stalkers. If I were anybody's ex-wife with a messy divorce and/or a restraining order, I'd be very opposed to all this.

nicholassmith 13y ago

I like how under the guise of protecting us from terrorism they're now protecting us from the most evil of evil crimes. There was a mild outrage about 5 years ago in the UK when a few councils were caught using RIPA laws (what GCHQ is currently claiming to be protected by) for all sorts of fun things. Like dog poop [1], ice lolly bribes [2] and so on. I feel 100% safer knowing that surveillance is used to tackle all these huge crimes. [1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7369543.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7369543.stm [2]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053039/Council-use-anti-terror-laws-spy-binmen-accused-accepting-strawberry-pop-bribe-away-trade-waste.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053039/Council-use-...

alan_cx 13y ago
Add to that UK police using terrorist powers to harass... sorry, stop and search kids who dare to be out in public. Oh, I also believe the police can use the terror excuse to search homes with out a proper warrant. Most people who are treated like this don't even know why. They just get quoted the act section number. Something like, "we are searching you / your home under section xyz." No mention of the terror laws. This is exactly why we should be very careful about giving sweeping powers to authorities under the guise of "terror".
- cmdkeen 13y ago
  The UK did away with S44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 precisely because there was backlash against the mass use of groundless searches. What was especially galling is that the UK has pretty broad search powers anyway based on reasonable suspicion, so anyone choosing a S44 search was basically admitting they didn't expect to find anything.
retube 13y ago
I fully agree with the dog poop. I don't care what measures the authorities take to hunt down and hopefully exterminate owners that leave dog shit all over the place. Utterly abhorrent, selfish, irresponsible and dangerous. These owners are a menace.

DigitalSea 13y ago

I am speechless. As an Australian (from Queensland though) I am absolutely shocked because I know from repeated experience as do many that local councils are staffed and run by usually highly incompetent people. How is it a council is able to access such information in the first place? Someone needs to demand some answers. Would hate for those criminals breaking the law with their unregistered pets considering it costs like maximum $80 per year to register a pet...

readme 13y ago

It sounds like spin. >“Retrieving a telephone subscriber’s name and address for an investigation into an offence is an important tool," she said. That was the reply from the spokeswoman and the article provides no accusations of any further "data interception" behavior. If I didn't know better, I'd say this article is trying to characterize caller id/the phonebook as "intercepting data", sure, it's technically accurate, but the words "caller id" are a lot less scary.

ryusage 13y ago
I remember a friend was up in arms a couple years ago about their phone number being exposed on Facebook. When I pointed out that's exactly what the phone book had done for decades, he suddenly didn't care much.

vicbrooker 13y ago

This seems to be the source, it has a little bit more information: http://www.wyndhamweekly.com.au/story/1628329/experts-slam-wyndham-councils-data-snooping/?cs=1553 http://www.wyndhamweekly.com.au/story/1628329/experts-slam-w...

hobolobo 13y ago

'If you build it, they will come' works for both baseball diamonds and surveillance systems, it seems.

davidbanham 13y ago

I'm calling BS on this. To me it looks like the council sees an illegally posted advertisement with a phone number on it, then seeks the name and address of the owner of that phone number. It looks like the journalist is then reaching to connect this with that new "metadata" word they've been hearing so much about.