Australian Police Commissioner Thinks Metadata Should Be Used to Prosecute Pirates

Australian’s, are you a little bit afraid that your metadata details could be used to prosecute you in a court of law? Well, a new and in-depth interview with the Australian Federal Police Commissioner has revealed that you should be. Australia’s Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin let loose in an interview with ABC Radio Melbourne that metadata should be used to prosecute pirates. Mr Colvin responded to journalists with “Absolutely. Any interface or connection someone has over the internet, we need to be able to identify the parties to that collection. Illegal downloads, piracy, cyber crimes, cyber security. Our ability to investigate them is pinned to the ability to retrieve metadata,” said the Police Commissioner.

After the comment was made, it was obvious that the cat was out of the bag. Australia’s Minister for Communications Malcom Turnbull tried to pick up the pieces, stating “A lot of internet piracy, downloading and sharing material is done by way of file-sharing, but the way that works is a torrent stream is created in which there are a whole number of computers with their own IPs that are sharing this pirated content. What the rights owners do is they use different programs to participate in the swarm and identify the IP addresses of the computers infringing copyright, and then they seek from the ISPs via subpoena the account details of the holder. They do this pretty much in real-time so the two year holding of data doesn’t make a big difference in terms of copyright infringement, they’re dealing with the here and now. The police commissioners interests tend to be much longer. It is relevant and it happens all the time.”

It’s a fairly big slip up by the Australian Government for not only fiercely relying the already hotly debated topic of metadata collection, but also for its projected transcended use against online users and citizens.

Thanks to Gizmodo for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of TechAres.