The new cybercrime bill, introduced in June by Attorney-General Robert McClelland, lays out legislative changes that will let Australia accede to an international cyber law convention, touted by the United States as an important bulwark in the fight against cybercrime.
However, critics of the bill - which will also create provisions that allow foreign agencies such as the FBI to request data retention - say it goes too far and will be a significant invasion of privacy and civil liberties.
Many of those submissions included concerns about the extended reach the bill would provide to law enforcement and security agencies, and that there were no legal restrictions regarding how data was used by foreign nations once it was handed over.
''We are [concerned that] there appears to be no way of guaranteeing or enforcing limitations that are supposedly placed on overseas law enforcement agencies,'' spokesman for the Australian Privacy Foundation, Nigel Waters, told the committee during a public hearing earlier this month.
Australia was, per capita, home to more data interception than almost anywhere else in the world, he said, making the concerns about this bill particularly important.
There was some recognition of that concern yesterday, with the joint select committee on cyber safety recommending 13 changes that it said would clarify and tighten conditions under which agencies could access information.
''We want to ensure powers are available to fight cyber crime and that the public has confidence in the scheme,'' the committee chairman, Labor senator Catryna Bilyk, said.
She rejected claims, however, that the bill would allow wholesale retention of people's private data. ''It is not a data retention scheme and it does not allow foreign countries to demand access to private communications, as has been alleged,'' she said.
Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam applauded the committee's report, which he said was ''highly critical'' of the draft bill.
''We all want to see enhanced collaboration by law enforcement agencies fighting serious crime, but the proposed law goes well beyond the already controversial European convention on which it is based and could encroach on civil liberties,'' Senator Ludlam said yesterday.
He also criticised the speed with which the bill had travelled through Parliament, saying ''a disturbing pattern of behaviour'' had emerged, with the Attorney-General's Department fast-tracking several national security bills through the parliamentary process. That reduced scrutiny of legislation that could affect civil liberties, he said.
Online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia said it was keen to see functional and appropriate legislation to combat cybercrime but it was not going to welcome laws that limit civil rights and unnecessarily increase surveillance on Australian citizens, particularly by other countries.
"There are a number of provisions in [the bill] that go well beyond the [European] Convention, into areas such as collection and retention of material on Australians that can potentially be used by third states to undertake legal action against Australians where no Australian law has been broken," said EFA spokesman Stephen Collins.
David Vaile, executive director of the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, said many of the concerns about the bill raised by himself and others had been left "unaddressed or unresolved" by the committee, which he said made minor suggestions for tweaking the Bill.
The Attorney-General, Mr McClelland, welcomed the report.
Dylan Welch and Asher Moses @'The Vine'
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