America's Most Wanted Man Criticises Australia’s Data Retention Laws Saying They Can’t Stop Terrorism

The most wanted man in the United States, Edward Snowden lambasted Australia’s use of metadata collection, opining that terrorism should not be fought with surveillance. Speaking via satellite, Snowden attributed terrorism to exuberant surveillance.

“Nine times out of 10 when you see someone on the news who is engaged in some sort of radical j******t activity, these are people who had a long record. The reason these attacks happened is not because we did not have enough surveillance, it is because we had too much,” Snowden expounded his claim.

The efficiency of metadata collection can be analysed from the terrorist attack in the United States, Snowden said, indicating that even the strongest power — the United States — was not spared by terrorism despite its gathering of metadata.

Australia’s recent enactment of data retention laws enable the government to legitimately spy on “everybody all the time,” according to Snowden, who joined the debate at Progress 2015 Conference and described Australia’s surveillance initiative to be similar to the United Kingdom’s Tempora program.

With the passage of data retention laws, the federal government of Australia can prompt telecommunication companies to keep customers' computer and phone metadata for two years. “What this means is they are watching everybody all the time. They're collecting information and they're just putting it in buckets that they can then search through not only locally, not only in Australia, but they can then share this with foreign intelligences services. They can trawl through this information in the same way. Whether or not you're doing anything wrong you're being watched,” Snowden said.

Snowden explicated further that albeit Australia government must protect its citizens from terrorism, the use of metadata collection systems are “at odds with free Western society.” He then labelled such program as “dangerous” and cautioned against it, saying it is not among the “things that governments have ever traditionally been empowered to claim for themselves as authorities.”

According to Snowden’s revelation in 2013, the Tempora Program seeks to permit an agency and a partner in surveying more than 90 percent of cables routed across the United Kingdom collating information from 400. Currently, Snowden is the most wanted man in the U.S. for his exposé of the surveillance made by the U.S. government to its citizens. He has been considered a traitor and has sought refuge in Russia.

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