Government agencies pushing for longer mandatory metadata retention

Home affairs says agencies are pushing for data to be held for more than two years for complex investigations

Government agencies are pushing for telecommunications companies to be forced to retain customer data for law enforcement agencies for longer than the current two-year requirement.

Under the mandatory data retention legislation that passed in 2015, companies such as Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are required to store customer metadata, like number dialled, time of call and call location for two years.