Australian government willing to share uncensored citizen data
New slides leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that the Australian government was willing to share vast amounts of uncensored data that it collected on its citizens with a number of other countries around the world.
The slides from April 2008, first reported by The Guardian, show the willingness of the Australian government, through the Australian Signals Directorate, to hand over large amounts of metadata on its citizens to the other governments of the Five Eyes group — the United States, Canada, Britain, and New Zealand.
The Australian Signals Directorate — or Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), as it was known in 2008 — was said to be able to share "bulk, unselected, un-minimised metadata, as long as there is no intent to target an Australian national — unintentional collection is not viewed as a significant issue".
