The true cost of the Abbott government's new metadata retention laws has been revealed, with the government quietly publishing the estimated price tag without announcing it.
Meanwhile, a grassroots campaign has begun urging people to copy Attorney-General George Brandis in on all their communications to help him in his quest to get telcos to capture and stockpile metadata for warantless access by law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The campaign appears to be having some success, with some people figuring out a way to send harassing text messages directly to the iPhone of Senator Brandis by utilising Apple's iMessage feature, which appears to be linked to the senator's Australian Parliament House email address, senator.brandis@aph.gov.au.
Contacted for comment, Senator Brandis' press secretary said he was unaware of the matter and did not know whether the iMessages were getting through to Senator Brandis' phone.
Harassing senators off the line
pic.twitter.com/KE1SHS58Du — Luke Vurens (@LukeVurens)
March 2, 2015
I'm messaging George Brandis the entire first chapter of 1984
@SenatorLudlam
pic.twitter.com/P9iwNtEwMl — Lauren Ingram (@laureningram)
March 2, 2015
Oh god I could do this all day
pic.twitter.com/L0fOK1jmFX — Lauren Ingram (@laureningram)
March 2, 2015
According to telcos, the new metadata retention laws could drive up the price of household internet and phone plans.
The cost estimate, between $188.8 million and $319.1 million, is understood to have been published on the Attorney-General Department's website without a press release.
The cost figures were arrived at by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which the government commissioned to assess the issue late last year.
"PwC estimated the upfront capital cost of the regime to all of business to be between $188.8 million and $319.1 million, which is less than 1 per cent of the $43 billion in revenue generated by the telecommunications industry annually," the Attorney-General's Department website states. "This estimate will inform the Australian government in delivering on its commitment to make a reasonable contribution to the capital costs of implementation of the data retention regime."
One telecommunications industry insider Fairfax Media spoke to quipped that the difference between the two estimates — $130.3 million — was like the difference between "one battleship or two battleships".
The insider added that the figures were authorised to be put on the Attorney-General Department's website late on Thursday night.
John Stanton, chief executive officer at telco industry group Communications Alliance, highlighted the fact that the costs did not take into account recommendations made by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), which scrutinised the data retention scheme and reported its findings to government on Friday.
One of those recommendations — that data retained under the regime should be encrypted to protect it from hackers — was not factored into the costs, Mr Stanton said.
Another recommendation requiring industry to report any data breaches to consumers and government could also potentially drive up costs, he said
A third requirement that telcos should be required to provide customers with access to their metadata for a fee could also potentially create a new industry in Australia, Mr Stanton said.
"If the costs of these recommendations are accepted then they will need to be factored into the overall estimate of the cost that industry faces," he said, adding that it could blow out the estimated costs.
Mr Stanton added that there was "a real risk" that Australians' internet bills would go up as a result of the regime, saying that this depended on what the government's contribution to the upfront capital costs would be.
Regardless, he said the cost would flow through to consumers either through taxes from government or increased internet bills from industry.
Mr Stanton's comments mimic those of internet service provider iiNet Group, which has stated that bills could go up by as much as $10 per month as a result.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has previously said that the cost of the data retention regime to the telco industry would be about 1 per cent of the $40 billion revenue it turns over each year. Some had calculated this to be roughly $400 million, but this was revised down to $300 million after government briefings.
The PJCIS scrutinising the new laws recommended on Friday that the laws pass, but only if about 40 recommendations were adopted. One of those was that the government provide industry with a "substantial" contribution towards costs, although the Abbott government has yet to commit to a figure.
Chair of the PJCIS, Dan Tehan, estimated on Friday that the costs would be somewhere between $200 million and $400 million.
The bill — the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014 — will be debated on Tuesday in the House of Representatives, where the government has a majority.
if passed it will then go to the Senate, where it is expected the Australian Greens and other crossbenchers will attempt to push amendments before Labor supports its passage.
In the meantime, smaller telcos, many of whom haven't been involved in negotiations with government, are beginning to wonder whether they will be affected by the new regime.
While the Communications Alliance has been involved with negotiations, most of Australia's smaller telcos are not members of the industry group.
Already, some of them have already been mentioning (in jest), the need for a "Mandatory Government Metadata surcharge tax", much like airline fuel surcharges.
The changes to metadata laws has attracted a large amount of criticism, with a recent poll showing 44 per cent of Australians opposed mandatory data retention while 40 per cent supported it.
