Mass surveillance in Australia

Mass surveillance in Australia occurs through a variety of means affecting telephone, internet and other communications networks, financial systems, vehicle and transit networks, international travel, access to government services and other parts of society.

Australia requires that pre-paid mobile telecommunications providers verify the identity of individuals before providing service.

According to Greens' Senator Scott Ludlam, Australian law enforcement agencies were issued 243,631 warrants to obtain telecommunications logs in the period from July 2010 to June 2011, which vastly overshadowed the 3500-odd legal intercepts of communications.

In 2013 it was reported that under Australian law state, territory and federal law enforcement authorities can access a variety of 'non-content' data from internet companies like Telstra, Optus and Google with authorisation by senior police officers or government officials rather than judicial warrant, and that "During criminal and revenue investigations in 2011-12, government agencies accessed private data and internet logs more than 300,000 times."

Google's transparency report shows a consistent trend of growth in requests by Australian authorities for private information, constantly rising approximately 20% year-on-year. The most recent published volume for the period ending December 2013 indicates a volume of around four individual requests per calendar day.

Telstra's transparency report for the period 1 July - 31 December 2013 does not include requests by national security agencies, only police and other agencies. Nevertheless, in the six-month period 40,644 requests were made, 36,053 for "Telstra customer information, carriage service records and pre-warrant checks" (name, address, date of birth, service number, call/SMS/internet records. Call records include called party, date, time and duration. Internet information includes date, time and duration of internet sessions and email logs from Telstra-administered addresses), 2,871 for "Life threatening situations and Triple Zero emergency calls", 270 for "Court orders", 1450 for "Warrants for interception or access to stored communications" (real time access): an average of around 222 requests per calendar day.

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