K wrote:Really??
Yes.
Read the legislation if you doubt it. It's all there, and it was all well-publicised at the time it was introduced. Well, extended. Abbot was the Prime Farkwit; George Brandis was the Attorney-General and he famously didn't even know what metadata
friggin was, never mind what sort of civil liberties atrocities he was enabling.
They pretended that it didn't amount to anything of consequence, "only metadata, we are not snooping on you". They lied. Barefaced lies. (Except for Brandis, who didn't understand what it was in the first place and thus didn't have to lie about it.)
Scott Ludlam (Greens) and David Leyonhjelm (serial dorkhead elected by a fluke and representing no-one) were the only two with the brains and guts to stand up and call the legislation out for what it was. Ludlam surprised no-one (he always was one of the very very best) but that idiot Leyonhjelm for almost the one and only time spoke the truth and covered himself with glory. All to no effect, of course. Labor spinelessly waved it through.
Make no mistake, the metadata they record includes everything you do. It gives away where you were, who you were with, who you called and how long you talked for, who called you, what time you got home, who you sent emails to and who you got them from, what you watched on Netfix, and the exact details of every website you visited.
And all of this private information can be - and is - accessed every day by any of thousands of different people, some of them in ridiculously unimportant or obscure positions, and none of it requiring a warrant. There are so many agencies with no-warrant access to your data that the Home Affairs Department admits it can't even provide a complete list of them.
For more detail than you can possibly absorb in any reasonable amount of time, start with this address:
https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of ... s+metadata Note that your search term will be recorded and may be used against you.
