from Crikey ….

While Australia’s major parties have embraced mass surveillance, the evidence continues to accumulate that it’s useless at preventing terrorism or solving crime. As we’ve explained until we’re blue in the face, we know from Germany, Denmark, the USA and the Netherlands that various forms of data retention (involving, in some cases, even more extensive data collection than Australians will be subject to) don’t help security agencies do the job they profess to do of protecting the public.

Moreover, as we saw in the Charlie Hebdo attack, France’s extensive mass surveillance laws did nothing to prevent attacks by terrorists already well known to authorities.

But now comes possibly the best evidence of the pointlessness of data retention of all - from the National Security Agency itself. America’s PBS yesterday revealed that key figures within the NSA planned to advise the then-head of the NSA that data retention of phone records should be scrapped. NSA staff were concerned not merely that the program of storing fixed line phone data was illegal - not something that overly concerns the NSA, admittedly - but that the benefits were meagre.

This was the same conclusion reached two years earlier when the NSA had decided to stop collecting email metadata - that the expense of collecting it was unjustified by the benefits.

Phone and email metadata will both be collected under Australia’s mass surveillance scheme. It’s one thing to adopt stupid, draconian policies. It’s quite another to do so after it’s become obvious from overseas experience that they don’t work.