Our submission to the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement’s Inquiry into new Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the challenges facing law enforcement agencies.
This was a joint submission by Drs Monique Mann, Adam Molnar, Ian Warren and Angela Daly on behalf of the Australian Privacy Foundation, Digital Rights Watch Australia, Electronic Frontiers Australia, and Future Wise.
Our main recommendations as regards to new ICTs and the challenges facing law enforcement are:
- Follow international precedent in surveillance programs and practices and with regard to, and respect of, international human rights standards;
- Suspend the current program of mandatory data retention and require a judicial warrant to access telecommunications information;
- Do not implement law or practices that involve undermining or weakening encrypted forms of communication and make use of existing targeted powers for accessing telecommunications information (via a judicial warrant as per the recommendation immediately above);
- In the case of investigations with an extraterritorial element, Australian police procedures comply with established MLAT procedures;
- Implement standards and procedures to ensure both the admissibility of evidence and the integrity of transnational investigations;
- Implement appropriate oversight structures for police use of new ICTs;
- Gather robust independent evidence on which reforms to law and policing on the basis of new technologies are guided and based, and;
- Increased government funding for independent research should be made available on a competitive basis.