Klaus
 Wed, 18 Feb 2015 18:33:25 +0100 
#^Joint Doorstop Interview, Gold Coast | Prime Minister of Australia
18 February 2015, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Prime Minister Tony Abbott


QUESTION:
Prime Minister, what do you expect the costs of retaining that data will be over two years and how do you balance the privacy concerns? There must be concerns about privacy violations for people who aren't the target?

PRIME MINISTER:
Ok, well, the cost of losing this data is an explosion in unsolved crime. That’s the price of losing this data. For instance, there was a recent child abuse investigation in Europe, in the United Kingdom, which does have metadata retention legislation, about 25 per cent of the suspects were successfully prosecuted using, in large measure, metadata. In Germany, which doesn't have metadata retention legislation, almost none of them were successfully prosecuted. So, if we want to combat crime, we need this legislation and if we don't get it, it will be a form of unilateral disarmament in the face of criminals and the price of that is very, very high indeed.

Now as for the cost of actually retaining the metadata, we have done some work. There are a range of figures which have been taken to the Joint Standing Committee, but even at the highest estimate it's less than one per cent of this $40 billion a year and growing sector. So, we're talking about a $40 billion a year sector and even at the highest estimate we've got, the cost of metadata retention is less than one per cent of the total sector. So, it seems like a small price to pay to give ourselves the kind of safety and the kind of freedom that people in a country like Australia deserve.

Germany is for sure a paradise for child abuse. :facepalm
And always these terrible federal constitutional courts in Germany that say that the current metadate retention rules are against the constitution. It's not that our politians don't want it, but fuck separation of powers. Who needs such a nonsense?!?

But the numbers are interesting about the costs. Let's see 1% of $40 billion is $400 million a year. According to Wikipedia Australia has an estimated population in 2015 of 23,7 million people. $400 000 000 / 23 700 000 = $16,88 per year for every inhabitant to have the their metadata stored for two years. "a small price to pay to give ourselves the kind of safety and the kind of freedom that people in a country like Australia deserve" o_O Who will pay for this by the way? I don't know how many million criminals they want to catch with this per year, but if the number is not very huge it is a very costly price.

QUESTION:
And about those privacy concerns, though, how do you balance that?

PRIME MINISTER:
We’re talking here about metadata; we’re not talking here about the content of communications, so, your web browsing history, what you actually say on phone calls, that’s not covered by this. It's just the data that the system generates. So, it’s, to use an old fashioned metaphor if you like, if you look at a letter, you've got the address, you've got the sender, you've got the date stamp, where it was posted and what time it was posted. It's the electronic version of what is on the front of the letter that we want to keep. The contents of the letter, well people can only get access to that with a warrant.

:headbang yeah, it's only metadata! :rofl
How much are the costs per inhabitant per year to record the letter metadata?

Oh damn, now I have headache again.
 Rant