Nobody expects politicians to tell the truth. But you would think that they could at least be consistent. The Liberals aren’t even capable of that when it comes to explaining their proposals for mass internet surveillance.

In August, attorney general George “Sith Lord” Brandis bumbled his way through an interview explaining the government’s plans. When asked what data would be stored he replied, “… Well … I … the … ma ma … ma … the … (pause) … what you’re viewing on the internet is not what we’re interested in.”

He eventually managed to explain that the metadata collected would be everyone’s IP address and the IP address of every website they visited. So clearly what you view on the internet is exactly what they are interested in recording.

A few days later, Brandis’s statement was contradicted by communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, who said the plan was “only” to record the IP addresses of individual users and not what sites they access. Clear as mud? Time to get clearer.

Next stop on this journey of obfuscation was a press conference with Brandis, Turnbull and Australian Federal Police chief Andrew Colvin on 30 October. Colvin explained that the storage of all our internet records would “absolutely” be used by the police to prosecute people infringing copyright (e.g. illegally downloading music, movies), piracy and cyber crimes, among other things.

Brandis didn’t utter a word of disagreement. Four days later, on ABC’s Q&A program, the attorney general said that Colvin was misunderstood and that the storage of metadata would be used only for the most “serious” of crimes. What are these “serious” crimes? Brandis said terrorism, but there is something he fears more: people telling the truth about government.

Connected to the mass storage of all of our metadata, sweeping changes are being made to allow the jailing of individuals who disclose sensitive information. As Brandis said on Q&A, these new laws are “primarily, in fact, intended to deal with a Snowden-type situation”.

Edward Snowden, who famously revealed the massive scale of US government surveillance of virtually everyone, was never labelled by Brandis as a whistleblower, but as a traitor. Under his new laws, the penalty would be up to 10 years’ imprisonment for any Australian daring to expose the truth, as Snowden has proudly done.

Christopher Warren from the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance condemned the government’s plans. The law “as it is currently drafted”, he wrote in a press release, “will seek to prosecute someone – whether it’s a legitimate whistleblower exposing wrongdoing or journalists who report the information”.

Brandis has since stated that journalists won’t be jailed for “doing their job”. But given the government’s flips and flops explaining metadata retention, can he really be trusted?

How much data?

The government’s plan at this stage is to enforce mandatory retention of everyone’s metadata for at least two years. Brandis has been quick to explain that the data to be stored is “just” metadata, but there is an incredible amount of information that could be mined from this: the websites you access, when you access them, your location and movements, who you email and much more.

The actual amount of data to be stored if the plan goes ahead is phenomenal. While the “free world” celebrates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the amount of data the Australian government would have access to is enough to make any former Stasi agent blush.

According to the Australian-based ISP iiNet, the amount of metadata created by its customers alone would be about 1 petabyte per day. A petabyte is 1 million gigabytes. In just 50 days the company would accumulate an equivalent amount of data to 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text – or the entire written works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages. The storage cost is estimated at up to $130m a year.

Metadata are already being accessed

The discussion about the storage of metadata has revealed a shocking picture of how our lives and movements can be and already have been accessed by both governments and business for years.

Did you know that under current laws, organisations such as the RSPCA or even your local council can access your phone records? Even data on who you’ve emailed has been available to them, without warrants. Yes, without warrants.

Worse still, there has been a steady increase in the number of requests for this information. Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) figures show that, over the past five years, more than half a million data requests have been made each year. According to a recent ACMA report, the requested data were largely “phone, web browsing and location data” of Australian citizens.

The government’s plan to retain metadata for at least two years has to be seen as an expansion of the already existing government intrusion. I’m sure over the next few months we will keep hearing bumbling contradictory statements out of the mouths of Brandis and Turnbull – but the truth is that the state increasingly has the right to spy on everything we do.

The author can be contacted at [email protected] using this public key if encryption is required.