Metadata collection comes under fire in new UN anti-surveillance draft resolution

This has implications for Australia.

Gigaom

Germany and Brazil have drafted a new version of an anti-surveillance resolution that the United Nations adopted late last year, this time describing the collection of metadata as a “highly intrusive act.”

The earlier resolution was also the product of German and Brazilian anger over the mass surveillance revelations of NSA leaker Edward Snowden (well, specifically their anger at their leaders being personally spied upon, but we’ll take righteous outrage where we can find it).

However, while it described the monitoring and collection of communications and personal data as a threat to human rights, it didn’t talk about metadata – the logs of who contacted whom and when, or which webpages people visit, as opposed to the contents of those communications and webpages. These details also paint a vivid picture of a person’s activities and networks.

According to a Thursday Reuters report, the new draft says that arbitrary surveillance…

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Australia offered to share citizens’ metadata with allies, report claims

Gigaom

Australia’s intelligence services have been happy — at least in principle — to share raw data about the communications of Australian citizens with espionage partners in the U.S. and Britain, according to the latest NSA leak published by the Guardian.

Australia is part of the so-called Five Eyes alliance, which was set up in the turbulent 1940s as a way for a core group of English-speaking nations to share signals intelligence with one another and to avoid spying on one another. The other members are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.

The latest piece of surveillance-related information, brought to light by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, records a meeting held by the five countries’ intelligence services in 2008. At that meeting, the services discussed how comfortable they were with sharing metadata – the fragments of recorded information that tell the spooks who contacted whom and when.

It seems…

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