Australian Government Using Data Retention Law To Seek Out Journalists' Sources, Hunt Down Whistleblowers

If there ever were decent protections for whistleblowers in Australia, they're gone now. Australia's Attorney General was pushing for harsher whistleblower punishments two years ago, while simultaneously claiming data retention laws -- and expanded permissions for intelligence agencies to pore through retained data -- were simply the way governments were doing business these days.

And what a business it is. The Australian government wants to punish whistleblowers but finds they're often difficult to track down. It's just so much easier to find those they leak documents to, like journalists, and work towards getting them to divulge their sources. The "best" part about the new data retention laws is that those seeking whistleblowers to punish won't have to confront journalists directly. In fact, they may never need to speak to them at all.

[Journalists'] union, the Media and Arts Alliance, has warned that they're likely to become a test case for a little known provision snuck into the Government's Data Retention laws, the Journalist Information Warrant Scheme. The new laws allow police and other investigative bodies to seek access to the phone records, emails and browser histories of journalists in order to track down sources they suspect of leaking confidential information.

Obviously, this raised concerns when the data retention law was first proposed. A band-aid was presented by legislators who threw in a few token "safeguards" to protect journalists' sources. But in practice, these safeguards aren't guarding anything. At best, they only give the appearance of adversarial proceedings before the government is given the greenlight to go digging through metadata.

Journalists and their employers are not allowed to challenge these warrants to the issuing body or even in court. They're not even told whether one has been granted. Instead, the legislation requires the Prime Minister to appoint two 'Public Interest Advocates' who can choose to make the case against issuing a warrant. However, these advocates aren't actually required to show support for the journalist, or media organisation, or even show up to deliver their case. Warrants can be issued without an advocate's attendance or submission, and last up to six months. The scope of the warrant extends to all the journalist's metadata captured over the previous two years.

The article notes that 21 Australian agencies can access journalists' data through this process -- data that must be retained by ISPs to better serve the "fighting terrorism" call. If it's used to sniff out whistleblowers or, I don't know, copyright infringers, then that's presumably considered a feature, rather than a bug.

The new law acts as a double-edged weapon against government accountability. It allows the government to seek out and punish those that expose wrongdoing and the chilling effect it creates means fewer journalists will be willing to publish documents showing evidence of government misconduct.