AFP officer accessed journalist's call records in metadata breach

"I'm sorry, I didn't know it was a crime" wouldn't fly in literally any other circumstance. Why do they think it's acceptable in this case. The police made it almost a month after this was made law to violate it, how long until the next, and the next? I seriously doubt that the police are appropriately able to self police here, there needs to be proper protection against them 'just looking it up without a warrant'. The facility shouldn't even be available without the appropriate processes.

"We haven't notified the journalist that we have breached and accessed that particular journalist's data without the warrant."

Cynical prediction - they self-reported this without identifying the journalist, because they intend to use it to lean on sources, informants, and suspects across a bunch of different cases... "Well, you know, we've already got the phone call metadata from the journalist you leaked to - there's no point lying to us son, we're just trying to help you out..."

So those officers should be thrown to the wolves.

Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse! It doesn't work for me and the speed limit and it shouldn't work for the police accessing this type of information.

> "We have raised the level of internal authorisation required for access to data of this type," he told reporters in Canberra.

> "We are limiting the number of authorised officers who can approve access of this type.

> "We are also re-rolling out and stepping up mandatory training to all investigators and authorised officers to make sure they are fully aware of their obligations under the Act."

Oops, we didn't mean to get caught, now we'll tell everyone they really shouldn't do this again.