Submission No. 13 - Australian Information Industry Association Limited
AUSTRALIAN INFORMATION INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION LIMITED
Mr Grant Harrison
Committee Secretary
Parliamentary Joint Committee on the
Australia Secret Intelligence Organisation
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600
Dear Mr Harrison
Thank you for providing the Australian Information Industry Association
(AIIA) with the opportunity to provide a submission to the review of the
ASIO Legislation Amendment Bill 1999. Mr Alan Baxter has written to me
asking that I reply on his behalf.
The Bill as presented is generally acceptable to AIIA and the comments
that relate to the environment rather than the Bill itself. We have not
commented on privacy issues.
AIIA's comments are on:
- The need for the Government to move on from a heavy focus on interception
regulation to one of surveillance regulation
- The need for continued consideration of the public policy issues and
for proper proceedures to be in place, in the use of remote agents.
The first comment relates to changes that appear to be occuring in the
areas of interception (principally telecommunications interception) and
surveillance. With the advances in technology (compression, encryption
and a multitude of different protocols), telecommunications interception
is becoming an unreasonable impost to ask of telecommunications service
providers. Cost of compliance is becoming unreasonably high. On the other
hand the advances in technology have aided surveillance in that devices
are becoming smaller, much more sophisticated and much cheaper.
The result of the changes in the interception and surveillance environments
is such that there will be much more of a reliance on surveillance devices/agents.
Current legislation focuses more on telecommunications interception. In
addition, surveillance devices have much more potential to impact on the
population as they are placed in their working and home environments.
Hence the legislation covering their use should be much more precise.
The second comment relates to the new methods of deploying surveillance
devices or agents. In the past these devices would have to have been physically
installed. With current technology. and particularly in the case of agents
in computing networks, the agents can be installed remotely.
The advances in technology and the ability for remote installation raises
concern that there must be continued public discussion and consideration
of the public policy issues. Proper procedures must also be in place to
ensure that:
- the agents are installed in the right place - complex network configurations
may mean that this may be very difficult to be precise;
- the agents are removed after use - cameras and other physical devices
had real value whereas agents may be expendable but have ongoing performance
implications; and
- any consequential damages resulting from the placement of the agent
is considered - loss of business performance from an improperly placed
or malfunctioning agent.
I trust that these comments have been useful in the consideration of
the Bill. AIIA would be happy to elaborate on the issues raised if this
is required.
Yours sincerely
Peter Upton
Executive Director
28 April 1999
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