Greens to lift lid on IT providers' Govt cooperation

Difficult road

Other aspects of the Greens anti-surveillance policy are:

• Plans to make security agencies report the number of requests they make for "telecommunications information and intercepts", in the same way that law enforcement agencies are required to do.
• Introduction of mandatory data breach notifications.
• Changes to the way 'Five Eyes' countries — US, Canada, Australia, UK and NZ — store intelligence data on foreign nationals.

Ludlam told iTnews while he did not expect the path to anti-surveillance and privacy reforms to be easy, it was still an area worth pursuing.

He called the five-pronged policy platform "stage two" of what he expected to be a "very long running international campaign not just by the Australian Greens but by civil society groups and other allies around the world."

Stage one was the introduction of a Bill that would institute judicial oversight for requests for telecommunications metadata. The Bill is currently under consideration in the Senate.

"I'm under no illusions that this is going to be a long campaign and that there are going to need to be more ideas put into the mix," Ludlam said.

"But this, we think, is a pretty solid place to start."