ISPs not prepared to accept data retention laws

Telecommunications industry lobby group Communications Alliance has conducted a survey to find out how many Internet service providers across Australia are willing to work according to the metadata legislation, which came into force Tuesday.

The survey depicted that around 84 percent of ISPs are not yet ready to collect and store metadata on time. Around 66 percent of the service providers are unclear about what kind of data they exactly need to collect.

Though the data retention laws officially came into effect on Tuesday, it will not be completely enforced until April 2017, according to Attorney General George Brandis. On the other hand, Communications Alliance chief executive John Stanton advocated that the ISPs should begin collecting metadata from the official date of enforcement of the legislation, regardless of their extension until 2017.

Eighty-one percent of service providers have presented a metadata retention plan, out of which only 10 percent has been approved. According to the Data Retention and Investigatory Act 2014, getting an extension for retaining required data is really difficult. However, the service providers have received a 'second chance'.

Stanton agreed that the ISPs were not provided with a required time, which is depicted from the survey. The laws formulated by the government do not specify the details about what they are actually expected to do.

“There are a thousand different nuances that I have seen flying around as to what needs to be retained in respect of a particular service. The complexity has always been part of the bedevilling aspect of this regime. There are still many providers, as the survey highlights, that aren't certain that they've got their requirements completely figured out, " he said via ITWire .

Telecommunications giants like Telstra and Optus are also supposed to retain metadata from different sources, including email, mobile, landline and Internet for two years.

Other nations have criticised and denied passing similar data retention legislations.

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