I sometimes feel like I eat Orwellian muesli for breakfast and don’t even break a cold sweat, but this one ticked a number of boxes on my ‘what the’ list … On the surface they are trying to catch criminals, and that’s OK, but how many ‘police forces’ do we need? If the AFP aren’t keeping up or delivering the goods, why create another force when we could help/reform/bolster the AFP for example (one option)?
If this happens, will Centrelink be the next agency fitted for hobnail boots to kick down our doors? I tend to think if there is a problem, fix it, don’t create another one.
The actual paper is here: https://static.treasury.gov.au/uploads/sites/1/2018/11/Consultation-Paper-Improving-black-economy-enforcement-and-offences.pdf
A few select quotes from the article … the paper is best read in complete context.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) could be allowed to directly access telecommunications metadata and other records such as those held by banks under a proposal aired by Treasury late last week.
[…]
Under existing laws, the ATO must strike up a joint investigation with the Australian Federal Police to obtain telco metadata or compel information from other third parties like banks.
Treasury claims that is “often impractical” for “low to mid-range black economy conduct”, adding “weeks” to investigations, “allow[ing] black economy participants to operate for longer periods of time and, in some instances, avoid detection altogether.”
It is proposing to designate the ATO as a criminal law enforcement agency to provide the tax office direct access to telecommunications metadata.
The ATO - a tax collecting agency - must go to the police if something criminal is taking place. How inconvenient …
In addition to telco metadata, the ATO would also gain powers to compel others to hand over data - or additional tools to scrape it from the internet themselves.
“Third party information, especially data from banks, is fundamental evidence to prove most low to mid-range black economy criminal offences,” Treasury said.
[…]
Under the proposal, the ATO could also be given tools to scrape “internet traffic such as publically available or subscription based data to identify transactions indicating potential black economy behaviour.”
“This data can be used by the ATO and other enforcement agencies for enhanced data matching with income reported to authorities,” Treasury said.
I’m all for catching criminals and identifying criminal activity - but it is a job for the police in my view, in this case the AFP - if they need help, then finance and resource them accordingly, don’t create another police force …