Josh Taylor reports the bad news for Australia’s citizenry and journalists:
The Australian government has relied on the votes of the Labor opposition to pass legislation on Thursday that will force telecommunications companies to retain customer data for two years for warrantless access by law enforcement.
The legislation — which will see call records, assigned IP addresses, location information, billing information, and other customer data stored for two years — passed the Senate on Thursday with the support of Labor senators.
[…]
Instead, the government agreed to a number of amendments from Labor, including requiring a warrant for accessing the data of a journalist for the purpose of identifying a source. The government will appoint a “public interest advocate” to argue on behalf of journalists — who won’t be aware that their data has been sought by law enforcement.
Read more on ZDNet.