Lower crime and national security are not reason enough alone for new powers that infringe on human rights, the Victorian information commissioner, Sven Bluemmel, has said.
Bluemmel told the digital citizens conference at the University of Melbourne on Wednesday that in his role, in having a responsibility for privacy and information security in Victoria, he tried to reinforce the idea with senior policymakers that they do not need to be making a choice between security and human rights or privacy.
“It’s a false dichotomy,” he said.
“One thing doesn’t trump another. There’s more to life than having low crime or national security. I think we can all think of societies where there’s essentially zero crime, would any of us want to live there?”
He said a sophisticated conversation needed to be had acknowledging there is more to a good, healthy society than a reduction in crime, or increased national security.
The commissioner’s office has made two submissions in the past two weeks to federal reviews of the mandatory data retention legislation and review of the anti-encryption Telecommunications (Assistance and Access) legislation passed late last year.
In the submission on the data retention review, Bluemmel has said the scheme – which requires telecommunications companies to store customer data for two years for access by law enforcement for investigations – may not be proportionate for the “mass intrusion on the privacy of millions of Australians”.
On the anti-encryption legislation, Bluemmel said he remained concerned about the impact it would have on the privacy and security of all Australians.
Bluemmel told the conference that he believed that the debate over the impact of national security legislation in Australia had reached a tipping point since the Australian federal police raids on the ABC and the home of the News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst in June.
“I think the conversation is a least happening from parts of the media that didn’t challenge where the developments are going, and now sort of are saying ‘oh okay maybe they’ve gone a bit far’,” he said.
On Tuesday, a report from the commonwealth ombudsman revealed that ACT police had improperly accessed metadata 116 times, while the Western Australian police twice obtained invalid warrants targeting journalists’ metadata.
The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, defended the data retention scheme on Wednesday, stating there were “consequences” for breaching the law, but could not say if any agency had been sanctioned for their mistakes.
The human rights commissioner, Edward Santow, told the conference that while the Australian Human Rights Commission is trying to influence policymakers to take into account human rights when developing national security legislation, it is an uphill battle.
“Our budget is less than 1% of the [defence and national security agencies],” he said. “Our capacity for influence is – I think we punch above our weight – but we can’t do it alone,” he said.
“It needs to be made absolutely crystal clear, sometimes, the false dichotomy between liberty and security is just that, and we need to be smarter in how we protect national security in ways that don’t impinge on human rights.”
