Dear Civil Aviation Safety Authority,

In 2015 the Commonwealth Attorney-General, under Freedom of Information, released a list of Government Agencies, Departments and Authorities that had applied for ongoing access to Telecommunication Data (phonecalls and internet browsing metadata) of Australians.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority was present in the two lists released under the FOI release, having applied for access to both historical Telecommunications Data and ongoing Telecommunications Data of Australians.

I therefore request the following Government Information:

a) Documents relating to the CASA's consideration and decision to apply for ongoing access to Telecommunications Data as per the TELECOMMUNICATIONS (INTERCEPTION AND ACCESS) ACT 1979;

b) The date of each Application made by CASA for access to Telecommunications Data under the TELECOMMUNICATIONS (INTERCEPTION AND ACCESS) ACT 1979;

c) Documents relating to how CASA deals with the privacy of data obtained through access to ongoing access to Telecommunications Data as per TELECOMMUNICATIONS (INTERCEPTION AND ACCESS) ACT 1979, including how the data received is obtained, assessed, stored and ultimately destroyed;

d) The number of documents containing data obtained by CASA through its ongoing access to Telecommunication Data; and

e) The number of documents containing data obtained by CASA through its ongoing access to Telecommunication Data that CASA has determined are not likely to be required for a permitted purpose and therefore has destroyed, for the period of time from since the commencement of ongoing access to the data was granted until 17th March 2017.

To assist you with your processing of your response, I am interested primarily in the following points, which I consider to be of significant public interest:

1) why the CASA thinks that it requires ongoing access to the Telecommunications Data of Australians, considering there appears to be very few legitimate reasons for ongoing access to phonecalls and internet browsing details of Australians in relation to CASA's role in regulating aviation safety; and

2) the scale of Telecommunications Data of Australians being obtained, handled, stored and ultimately destroyed by CASA.

If this can be answered as informal request, please do so.

Otherwise, please proceed with this as a formal request under the Freedom of Information principles & framework, i.e. the Freedom of Information Act 1982 & other associated guidelines and regulations.

Yours faithfully,

Richard Smith

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your replying to my request for Government Information of 19 March 2017.

May I take it that your response is a definitive official confirmation that since the commencement of the Data Retention Act, CASA has not reapplied for access to, nor received access to, Telecommunications Data of Australians?

If I assume the answer to my question above is in the affirmative, I consider the impact on my request for Government Information to be that it now covers a finite period of time where CASA accessed Telecommunications Data of Australians.

The narrowing down of the timeframe to a finite period does not materially invalidate nor change my requests for information, and I will address each one (a through e) in turn below.

My request part "a)"

"a) Documents relating to the CASA's consideration and decision to apply for ongoing access to Telecommunications Data as per the TELECOMMUNICATIONS (INTERCEPTION AND ACCESS) ACT 1979;"

goes to CASA's decision making in considering the benefits of accessing Telecommunications Data of Australians and when the decision was ultimately made to apply for access to Telecommunications Data. I am sure that a Commonwealth agency wouldn't commence the application process under a legislative regime without consulting the Minister and without having the decision minuted in an executive meeting. This request for Government Information still stands.

My request part "b)"

"b) The date of each Application made by CASA for access to Telecommunications Data under the TELECOMMUNICATIONS (INTERCEPTION AND ACCESS) ACT 1979;"

is not limited to the situation at the present time. Since CASA had access to Telecommunications Data prior to the commencement of the Data Retention Act, this request needs no further elaboration. This request for Government Information still stands.

My request part "c)"

"c) Documents relating to how CASA deals with the privacy of data obtained through access to ongoing access to Telecommunications Data as per TELECOMMUNICATIONS (INTERCEPTION AND ACCESS) ACT 1979, including how the data received is obtained, assessed, stored and ultimately destroyed;"

goes to the privacy controls that CASA maintained and operated under for the period that it had access to Telecommunications Data. This request for Government Information still stands.

My request part "d)":

"d) The number of documents containing data obtained by CASA through its ongoing access to Telecommunication Data;"

should now be a trivial matter of summing the number of documents that CASA obtained, considering that the period of time that CASA, having not reapplied for access, is now a finite period. This request for Government Information still stands.

My request part "e)":

e) The number of documents containing data obtained by CASA through its ongoing access to Telecommunication Data that CASA has determined are not likely to be required for a permitted purpose and therefore has destroyed, for the period of time from since the commencement of ongoing access to the data was granted until 17th March 2017

goes to the ultimate destruction of any documents obtained or produced during the finite period that CASA had access to Telecommunications Data. This request for Government Information still stands.

I trust that this clarifies the extent of my request, under FOI, for Government Information.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Smith

Adam,

Thank you for your quick reply.

In regards to the two queries in your reply of 22 March 2017, I address them below.

1. "I read item (a) of your request to be seeking access to documents whereby CASA considered, and sought, such a declaration. Please advise if that is not the case."

My request in item a) i.e.

"a) Documents relating to the CASA's consideration and decision to apply for ongoing access to Telecommunications Data as per the TELECOMMUNICATIONS (INTERCEPTION AND ACCESS) ACT 1979";

is in regards to information allowing the public to see the decision making & associated justifications at the first point in time when CASA decided to access the phone records and internet browsing data of Australians.

I would imagine that this is in the form of a discussion paper or meeting minutes and subsequent request letter to the Attorney-Generals Department and would have been sometime during the 9 year period between 2006 to 2015.

2. "In relation to items (b), (d) and (e), what timeframe are you seeking the information for"

In regards to your query regarding requested timeframes for items b), d) and e), my current request in item b) applies to the entire time from when CASA began to obtain Telecommunication Data to when it ceased to collect Telecommunication Data.

Following on from that, it is inferred in my request items d) and e) that the period of concern is also the entire time from when CASA began to obtain Telecommunication Data to when it ceased to collect Telecommunication Data.

However, in considering the balance between the public's right to see the complete picture of data being collected and the practicality of searching records further back in time, I would not object to my request being narrowed to encompass only the period commencing 12:00am 1st January 2009 to the date of commencement of the Data Retention Act when CASA ceased to be an enforcement agency.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Smith

David,

Thank you for your quick reply.

I did not receive the attachment in relation to item (a). Could you please resend it.

I would also like to thank you for framing your answers in the spirit of the information I was after.

I will consider your response and revert to you shortly.

Regards,

Richard Smith

David,

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

I have considered your response, and believe you have substantially answered the spirit of my request for Government Information.

As to the remainder of the items that you were unable to retrieve, I am satisfied that the effort required to go through historic incident investigations is excessive, compared to the incremental benefit it would add to the information that you have released.

I therefore consider this request for FOI closed.

Thanks,

Richard Smith