An Ombudsman’s investigation into the administration of telecommunications data by the Australian Federal Police’s ACT wing has found it treated its powers with a “cavalier approach”.
The Ombudsman, Michael Manthorpe said an investigation into ACT Policing was launched following a disclosure by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) that it had identified compliance issues affecting the ACT.
He said the issues involved the handling of requests for a certain type of telecommunications data — location-based services (LBS), colloquially known as ‘pings’ — dating back to 2007.
“My office’s investigation identified that the internal procedures at ACT Policing and a cavalier approach to exercising telecommunications data powers resulted in a culture that did not promote compliance with the Telecommunications Interceptions and Surveillance Act,” Mr Manthorpe said.
“The investigation identified that many of the authorisations made by ACT Policing for LBS between 13 October 2015 and 2019 were not properly authorised.”
He said this meant the LBS ‘pings’ could have been accessed unlawfully.
Mr Manthorpe said his findings may have a number of potential consequences “for example, the privacy of individuals may have been breached and we have been unable to rule out the possibility that unauthorised LBS may have been used for prosecutorial purposes”.
The Ombudsman’s investigation also found the AFP and ACT Policing missed a number of opportunities to identify and address the problem.
“Further, our office was not satisfied that the scope of the breaches had been fully identified by the AFP, nor the potential consequences, and consider it is possible breaches have occurred in parts of the AFP other than ACT Policing,” Mr Manthorpe said.
The report made eight recommendations to assist the AFP in addressing the issues and to implement processes to prevent a recurrence of similar issues.
The AFP has accepted all eight recommendations.
The Ombudsman’s 57-page report can be accessed at this PS News link.
