Attorney-General: I’m not to blame for censoring Web monitoring documents

What utter, total BS. As if you're not in charge of your own department! More spin from a Government made of spin,

“The discussion tends to be that Big Brother is after your private information,” he said. “The fact of the matter is this information can be very relevant for law enforcement, and regrettably when you talk about the Internet it can be very relevant to preventing the exploitation of children.

Looks like this government is addicted with children. They seem to want to do everything they can to let them grow up entirely padded by wool, right up till their 18th birthday, where it's suddenly ripped away, and theyre left on their own... Wow, what a load of spin. I say guide them as they grow, starting off with wool, but removing that as they grow,so when they hit 18, theyre fully prepared

Now let me understand the rhetoric from the people against this proposeal:

First the anti-filter activists keep demanding that law enforcement do more to track and nab child exploiutation offenders...

Then when the AG dept takes a logical and internationally standard step of ensuring the logs that ISPs already collect are held and maintained for a standardised minumum period, for the purpose of law enforcement, they are now all upset over the temerity of the law enforcement agencies to do that...

It is NOT the govt collecting the logs, the ISPs already do that...

The govt is ensuring that the logs, which are already collected by ISPs, are kept available for standardised periods and can be accessed by duly authorised agencies...

It is standard lawful intervention practice in most western democracies to be able to access phone and communications records. Many of these countries have regulations in place to ensure retention periods and access.

As much child exploitation activity and distribution occurs over the internet, police will need access to these records in order to monitor, track and eventually apprehend offenders more effectively.

Not sure how else you think they are going to do this?? Wave a magic wand and the IP addresses or acct details appear on a screen like in NCIS etc?? Get real people.

LOL.

Law enforcement agencies can get IP addresses by doing actual police work a.k.a tracking those that are downloading/uploading suspect content on P2P and other networks, they also do their job by bringing down websites.

They never have nor never will need ISP logs kept for every individual in the country.

So, why don't you get real?

Ahhh the governments old "Wont someone think of the children line" It;s not somethng the government is driving as an issue because they know the uproar it would cause if it became wide spread knowledge.

It is akin to tracking you and following you into every place you visit throughout the day in real life with a warrant of any kind, but even worse storing that info so it can be accessed without a warrant by any police or government department who wants it at any time.

Seriously this is a HUGE issue and should be brought up and discussed before the election.

Getting sick of hearing that the government can ignore your rights in any way it sees fit because somewhere, at some point, a child has been abused. Sickening.

so "the secretary of the department makes the call on these matters" is the one that has the power and seems to be running the department... What does Robert McClelland do? can we sack him and invest his salary into the police and the cyber crime unit?

Didn't Conroy recently go on a big rant about how Google was breaching privacy by capturing random wifi packet as they drove around doing the street view survey? And their collection was of a few meaningless packets to generate statistics. And then they did what? And then called the censorship on the whole ordeal Unnecessary debate? Could impede government decision making? What kind of morons do they take us for? Next they will be telling us that democracy could lead to a bias election where their possition may be compromised. Seriously, what is going on here. Vote these evil nutjobs out asap!

You fat useless bastard attorney general.
You are nothing more than a technologically illiterate fool. Its a disgrace you relate this back to child exploitation it has absolutely nothing to do with that.
This is nothing more than treating EVERY SINGLE AUSTRALIAN CITIZEN LIKE A CRIMINAL.

You are a disgrace, you are pathetic and we are a democracy not a communist nation.

"Freedom of Information" is Government-speak for "You are free to read only as much information as we decide to let you read!"

“It’s an issue the department is consulting on partly as a result of representations from agencies, partly as a result of international trends.”

International trends? What does that mean? We're going to do something just because everyone else is doing it?

Planning on jumping off of any bridges, Mr Clellan? Once someone else goes first, of course.

Also, why the hell doesn't Robbie boy have access to a document put together by his own department?

The point's already been well made that a minister is in charge of their department, and is responsible for what is said, irrespective of what McClelland might think or claim.

After all the jawboning recently about freedom of access to information, it's not acceptable to be told “release of such documents may lead to premature unnecessary debate and could potentially prejudice and impede government decision making,”

Debate impedes govt decision making? Are they such poor fragile little things?

The quoted comment sounds like bloody rubbish, and anyone authorised to make public statements surely should know that.

It seems that NOT releasing the uncensored documents has led directly to a premature unneccessary debate - most of it negatively aimed at the people who are trying to avoid a premature unneccesary debate. Ah, irony.