This article is more than 1 year old

No, George Brandis, telcos still don't want you taking the console in their networks

Proposed Australian telecommunications security laws are a mess

Australia's telcos are still, by and large, unhappy with the idea that Attorney-General Senator George Brandis wants to play uber-sysadmin.

In submissions to the government's inquiry into telecommunications security legislation, carriers are saying that the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 creates costs and red tape without corresponding benefit.

Among other things, the security "reforms" would give the Department of the Attorney-General a veto over significant changes to a carrier's network infrastructure, in the name of national security.

As Vodafone Hutchison Australia puts it (PDF), the bill "hands unjustifiably significant additional and intrusive powers to Government" and "still lacks transparency in justification for intrusion into commercial decisions."

Because there's no judicial review of the Attorney-General's Department (AGD)'s decisions, the carrier says there's a clear risk of arbitrary decisions, while on the commercial side, the government's interference already limits choice of vendor for carrier contracts (and therefore is creating an anti-competitive environment).

TPG Telecom's submission (PDF) notes that the current exposure draft of the legislation still gives too much power to the AGD: "The Attorney-General still has broad powers to tell telcos how to operate their networks and ultimately undermine sound investment decisions made by industry," the company writes.

TPG notes the lack of judicial oversight in another aspect of the legislation: its proposed power to tell carriers to unplug their networks to try and prevent terrorist attacks. "TPG considers that ... the exercise of the power should be subject to judicial oversight rather than just a bare power for the executive branch."

A joint submission in mid-January by the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group), Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) and the Communications Alliance was similarly scathing.

"The purpose of the proposed reform remains unclear," they write (PDF), and "the onerous nature of the compliance requirements will act to hamper the responsiveness of carriers and carriage service providers (C/CSPs) to cyber threats."

The submission also complains the legislation is vaguely drafted, and "the guideline information concerning the potential requirement for C/CSPs to retrofit or remove existing facilities is internally inconsistent, leaving open the risk that industry could face very high costs to rebuild existing networks."

In other words, it's a mess and Australia's carriers think the government needs to return to the drawing board, give it a thorough cleansing, then start again. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like