Sobriquet
@sobriquet@aus.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago
@james @pospi also, the ABC article is specifically talking about digital forensics (ie they have physical access to the phone, and copy data from it to analyse). This is not “cell tower data”, and other than needing a warrant, it’s also not scalable to a point they could use to “validate logbook claims” even if they could / wanted to.
Sobriquet
@sobriquet@aus.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago
@pospi it’s been a while since I’ve read the Telecommunications Interception Act, but I just had a quick scan again (great bedtime reading for insomniacs! 🤣), and I’m pretty sure ATO is not one of the agencies that can use the powers in the act.

Also, how would this even work at any scale that would allow this to happen in anything but the most extreme cases of abuse? I keep paper logs in bad handwriting, that never even make it as far as my accountant. Even if the ATO requested these logs, they’d need to digitise them, index them, somehow automatically understand the format of my specific log, then somehow match up each trip (which may include very descriptive terms like “mail”, “office”, or “Bob”) with the location of my phone… that comes with me on trains, in other people’s cars, and lots of other places. Also, I don’t record the time of my trips. How would they know if the 10ks they saw my phone move was, or was not, the 10ks I’m claiming that day?

I have no doubt that for serious infringements, police might get involved and use their powers to aid with the investigation, but to assume this happens on any regular basis just to “validate logbook claims” seems incredibly far fetched.
pospi
@pospi@kolektiva.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago
@sobriquet oh, you went deep! Love that 🙂

Well, I think:

- This is only done in an audit, which is carried out manually by a human at the ATO
- If you keep a logbook, you're supposed to record where each trip originated and ended up along with the dates
- Therefore it's a relatively quick matching process to look at an interface that plots someone's location over time & check their location against a few records in said logbook

Doesn't seem that infeasible to me.
Sobriquet
@sobriquet@aus.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago
@pospi still comes down to the pesky problem of warrants (which they couldn’t get just for an “audit”), and the fact that as far as can tell they’d need police to get the warrant if they wanted telco data. Forensic dump of your phone (as per the ABC article)? 100%. I know for a fact they do that. But cell tower data would be pretty extreme.
pospi
@pospi@kolektiva.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago
@sobriquet I kinda thought cell tower data was the most liberally provided, depending on the telco. For sure Telstra provided some departments with direct access to their systems which bypassed any need for a warrant.

I wish Ben Grubb's case had gone differently, or that he was still covering this stuff 😔 https://commsrisk.com/telstra-defeats-aussie-privacy-commissioner-over-metadata/