THE HON NICOLA ROXON MP

Attorney-General

Minister for Emergency Management

LETTER TO THE EDITOR – HERALD SUN – PUBLISHED 7 SEPTEMBER 2012

Contrary to your article (“Roxon lines up spy law”, 5 September) the Government is not proposing to store everyone’s emails, Facebook updates or tweets.

Earlier this year I asked Parliament’s intelligence committee to investigate potential reforms to national security legislation, before deciding my own position.

One of the many potential reforms in this review is whether or not telecommunications data should have to be held for a certain period by telecommunications providers, so it is there if it is needed to investigate crime or terrorism.

Telecommunications data includes such things as the time an email is sent and who it is sent to. It does not include storing the content of emails, tweets and posts.

There is also no proposal to enforce people to give up passwords.

There are already powers for law enforcement agencies to compel suspects to decrypt data such as child pornography held on a computer to turn unintelligible information into compelling evidence against these serious criminals. The question we’re asking the committee is whether this should extend to live communications like chat rooms for crimes like paedophilia.

I am not backing or opposing any of reforms that I have referred to the Committee. I want to make sure I have advice from the experts and hear from the community before making decisions on these important reforms.