Metadata retention laws have their place, but only for a select few. The select few being society's most slimiest and despicable individuals, like terrorists, would be terrorists, drug lords, pedophiles and the the lowlifes who associate with them down the internet highway.
State and federal police, as well as ASIO, need to have metadata retention up their investigative sleeve to be able to keep a vigilant tab on every single little cyberspace communication which such people make, because the internet is their playground to get up to all kinds of evil mischief under the radar of more 'traditional' forms of police investigative tools.
However, the sweeping scope of the metadata laws to include the 'general public' for being potential targets of a police or a ASIO metadata sting, for alleged criminality which has nothing to do with terrorism, planned terrorism, the narcotics trade or pedophilia / child sex exploitation, must be viewed as being potentially fascist and Big Brother and powers which are very open to abuse by rogue police and ASIO officers.
The only exception to that rule with the general public and metadata retention being the likes of Centrelink, which obviously needs the authority to access metadata in order to conduct an investigation into alleged welfare rorting.
As far as journalists and editors in the media are concerned, I don't think they can draw too much comfort from the last minute backdown by Tony Abbott which Bill Shorten forced upon him to get Labor's support to pass the laws.
Journos will still be in the firing line and have it in the back of their mind their whole working life that police and ASIO, at a moment's notice, will have the power to bypass the courts with nothing more than what constitutes a search warrant to pick on anyone they want to, for very contestable reasons. Media confidentially and investigative journalism is certainly in great peril.
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