The Commonwealth Ombudsman has called for greater overall awareness from some public service Agencies relating to their obligations when intercepting communications under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act and other compliance controls.
In his annual report Monitoring agency access to stored communications and telecommunications data under Chapters 3 and 4 of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 For the period 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019 the Ombudsman, Michael Manthorpe said there was a “critical need for greater overall awareness within some Agencies of the Act’s requirements and the need for stronger compliance controls”.
Mr Manthorpe said his Office’s inspections assessed Agencies’ records relating to their use of stored communications and telecommunications data for the period from 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018.
“The Office’s role is to provide independent oversight of Agencies’ use of these covert and intrusive powers, which we achieve by conducting inspections of Agencies’ records, policies and processes to assess whether their use of the powers complies with the Act,” Mr Manthorpe said.
“While we continue to see improvement in most Agencies’ processes to manage the use of these powers and achieve compliance with the Act, we also identified areas at some Agencies where further work is needed to adequately satisfy the Act’s requirements,” he said.
“In addition, several issues that we identified during our 2017–2018 inspections, were identified again in 2018–2019 inspections.”
Mr Manthorpe said some of the repeat issues were due to the retrospective nature of his Office’s inspections however he found, in some instances, that Agencies had not taken adequate remedial action to address previous audit findings.
“In our view, this speaks to a critical need for greater overall awareness within some Agencies of the Act’s requirements and the need for stronger compliance controls,” the Ombudsman said.
“In saying this, we also acknowledge that a number of our findings were proactively identified and disclosed by Agencies,” he said.
Mr Manthorpe made 13 recommendations to the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Tasmania Police, NSW Police Force (NSWPF), and the Victoria Police.
He also made suggestions, including better practice suggestions, to the AFP, the Department of Home Affairs, the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption (South Australia), NSWPF, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, Queensland Police Service, Western Australia Police and Victorian Police.
The Ombudsman’s 92-page report can be accessed at this PS News link.
