It was announced this week that the Australian Labor government is looking at putting in place laws that require all businesses that provide Internet access to record details on what websites are being viewed and what emails are being sent by its users. It is still unclear if the actual email content would be stored or just who the emails are being sent to.

This comes after the government continues to push on with its widely unpopular Internet filtering scheme.

There are a number of problems with tracking this sort of data from both technical and ethical sides.

1. The amount of data that would need to be stored in order to track every single website viewed and every email sent for a currently indefinite period of time would be crazy. Who pays for this, thats right the Australian population either through taxes with subsidies to the ISP’s or by increased Internet fees.

2. Storing all this sort of information leaves it open to possible attacks from criminals, the type of people this law is supposedly being put in place to target. Just think about what would happen if say a big military company like BAE had all its confidential emails sitting around in central locations on different ISP’s. Australian ISP’s would suddenly become the number one target for international government espionage attempts.

3. If you ever send any nude pictures to your partner by email watch out Kevin Rudd may be looking at them. But don’t worry, its not like photos and videos used for surveillance have ever made it to the Internet before.. http://www.notbored.org/camera-abuses.html .. hmm never mind, thats right we can trust Kevin Rudd. Those must have been isolated cases overseas, that would never happen in Australia.

4. How will they properly tie the account to an actual user? In terms of traditional home and business Internet access its easy to know who is using what account because its tied to an address. But what about public wifi networks? Is this the end of free public Wifi? Or what about criminals signing up for mobile Internet access using stolen details?

5. Also relating to the criminals, I can easily hide what websites I am going to and what emails I am sending. It takes basically no effort at all to set it up. Surely the criminals would be hiding their Internet usage if they are doing illegal things. So how does this proposed law help in law enforcement at all?

If the government suspects someone of criminal behavior they would currently get a warrant to tap their phone and/or Internet. Under this proposed law it is like having a permanent phone tap on every single person in the country. Everyone will be guilty until proven innocent.

Will the government start recording everyones phone calls next? Photo copy every single Australia Post letter that is sent? Log every book and movie you borrow or buy?

This is the path Australia is going down. Australia is becoming a Fascist country where personal rights are being eroded because we can’t apparently look after ourselves.

Stand up for your rights at the next election!