A Charles Sturt University (CSU) intelligence and security expert has welcomed last week's parliamentary report into the proposed national Data Retention Bill.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) released its 362-page report on its review of the federal government's planned Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014 late on Friday 27 February. The Committee had been reviewing this Bill since November.

Dr Patrick Walsh, senior lecturer in the CSU Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, said, "The report delivered 39 recommendations which go a long way to clarify concerns about which agencies and the kind of data they can access, what service providers need to do to retain the data, and oversight of this legislation.

"Of course, this legislation needs to be understood in a broader context," he said. "It is the latest in a suite of counterterrorism or intelligence legislation that emerged following the 9/11 attacks on the USA. Such legislation has not been free from controversy.

"Since 9/11, intelligence agencies have asked politicians for the technology and legislation to allow them to be more proactive collectors of information. This has resulted in several policy, ethical and privacy debates, key among them debates about what is privacy versus national security? The Wikileaks and Edward Snowden security leaks have only added fuel to these debates."

Dr Walsh said the increasingly complex threats that Australia faces, particularly from terrorism and organised crime with foreign and domestic dimensions, requires a more proactive intelligence effort that can keep up with the revolution in digital communications.

"The amount of data that intelligence agencies potentially have available to them is staggering," he said. "People argue the data retention legislation will possibly help them find the needle in the haystack. But I think it's more likely that such laws hopefully will help them find the haystacks more quickly in which they should be looking for the needle.

"Unlike its US counterparts such as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which are better resourced, the PJCIS has shown good sensible bipartisan support on this piece of legislation and the Foreign Fighters Bill. They should be commended."

Dr Walsh cites several examples of the PJCIS report's clarifications. Recommendation 7 makes it clear that service providers are not to keep web browsing histories or other destination information for incoming or outgoing traffic. Recommendation 9 clarified that it was a two-year-only period for retention, with recommendation 10 providing further clarification on the retention and destruction of data after two years.

"Some other recommendations, though, may worry some in the government who are already looking for savings," Dr Walsh said. "Recommendation 16, for example, advises the government to make a substantial contribution to the upfront capital cost of service providers implementing their data retention obligations."

Regarding oversight, the Committee has recommended that the Commonwealth Ombudsman be given more power in the inspection of agencies accessing, storing, using and destroying metadata.

"Personally, I would have given that greater inspection and reporting role to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS), who has the more global review role over all our intelligence agencies, and have added that key federal law enforcement agencies be under the purview of the IGIS," Dr Walsh said.

Finally, while agreeing with the principle of press freedom and protection of journalist's sources, the PJCIS placed these issues in the 'too hard basket' suggesting only that these issues should be the subject of a further inquiry of their own.

The PJCIS has recommended that any amendments would need to come back to it and parliament for additional review.

"Of course, there is a difference between enacting laws and their operation, so this legislation needs careful watching as it will step on some people's rights to privacy," Dr Walsh said. "But, as always, the principles of probable cause and proportionality are the moral principles that must continue to guide activities of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

"The good work by the PJCIS doesn't make a growing discord in the community about what is privacy, national security, or even what should be secret go away. These debates in a liberal democracy such as ours should continue. But if the government adopts all the recommendations by the PJCIS then we will have a more workable and accountable piece of legislation than what was originally proposed."