Keep limits on snooping

Kim Dotcom, the internet entrepreneur, attracted plenty of media attention when he appeared before Parliament’s Intelligence Committee. This is understandable. The urgency the Government has given to widening its surveillance powers results from illegalities exposed when Mr Dotcom went to court to challenge American efforts to have him extradited to face copyright charges in the United States.

But we should focus more on the bill the committee is considering. Among other things, it will allow the Government Communications Security Bureau to wade through your metadata without a warrant. ‘‘Metadata’’, as The Guardian recently explained, is information generated as you use technology. Examples include the date and time you called somebody or the location from which you last accessed your email. Data collected generally does not contain personal or content-specific details; rather, it is transactional information about the user, the device and activities taking place.

Under the Bill before the Intelligence Committee, the GCSB will need no warrant to keep tabs on your phone records, phone location, who you emailed and when.

You might say that’s a price you will willingly pay to keep terrorists at bay. But government prying goes far beyond what is necessary for security purposes. The United States is spying on politicians among its allies and – in this country – parliamentary officials saw nothing wrong in surrendering information about phone calls and emails to and from a Government minister, Peter Dunne, during an investigation into a media leak.

Among measures to keep intelligence agencies on a leash, metadata should be treated the same as phone tapping and require an interception warrant. The GCSB’s illegal operations suggest we can never be confident the legal limits will be respected, of course. According to recent disclosures, moreover, the PM’s chief of staff – without warrants or statutory authority – has requested details of email traffic in ministerial offices on other occasions when leaks have been suspected. There’s no comfort in knowing that not even our ministers are immune from state snoops.