UK and Australia have introduced internet monitoring and data retention laws.

Canada too is introducing a similar bill. France as well.

The UK has had the High Court throw them out. But the Conservative Government is fighting back. Europe is also throwing out such laws.

The USA is trying to postpone its response to the controversy over the actions of their intelligence agencies after the Edward Snowden revelations.

From my perspective as a ex-system administrator, ex-desktop support operative and ex-service manager for a web site, these laws are made by people who neither understand the Internet nor its users. So why make these laws?

Let’s look at Australia….

Australia has introduced laws blocking certain web sites. These can be easily circumvented by changing Domain Name Server settings.

As well, Australia has brought in laws monitoring internet usage. Again, these laws can be easily avoided. Greens Senator Scott Ludlam through a series of questions detailed the easy ways these laws can be avoided.  Besides which any hacker or terrorist can take even further measures to avoid surveillance.

As well, those laws laughably cover the storage of metadata. Here in Australia, ISPs are in the process of determining the Government requirements and getting nowhere fast despite a closing deadline. Unfortunately, the responsible minister Attorney-General George Brandis may be of little help here as this incredible interview illustrates.

But in all of that there are two issues that are overlooked.

First is best termed as the KGB problem. Reputedly, the USSR spies ended up amassing so much data that they couldn’t make sense of it.  And even with the mega oceans of big data that surveillance will yield, it will still require analysis. It won’t be as simple as looking for keywords as this example shows. Suppose a company runs software that checks emails for offensive words. Suppose it looks for the word butt. Emails found would cover smoking habits, porn or mutual admiration! Further analysis would be needed, perhaps something like the following : a phone call to florist, phone call to removalist then trawling internet dating web sites may mean a break up or a reconciliation.

The second is best termed as temptation. Such a vast amount of data would be a  hacker’s prize. So it better be secure. But almost certainly such data will be treated with disrespect by its stewards. Why? It’s just backups that we can access online. So ultimately hackers will break into it. After all, if hackers can break into the US personnel database, what’s stopping them breaking in to the stored metadata. Then you will have untrusted strangers looking at your deleted Facebook and Twitter posts.

So I return to the question, why has a Government who doesn’t understand the internet and its inhabitants made these laws?

Clearly, not to catch terrorists and hackers. They’re smart enough to get around them. Perhaps, its the opposite, to catch people who aren’t hackers and terrorists. People like you and me.