Kane: "...there are organised criminal gangs that are not using our services. I have made a note here that Telstra is probably a victim of our own success in relation to this. As I said, we have a long history of support for law-enforcement and national security agencies and as a result they know the quality of the reporting we are able to deliver and expert testimony in court. Common sense says they probably would not use our services."

Kane: "The simple evolution of technology would mean that we could not capture or provide any metadata or any content around something like Gmail, because it is Google-owned, it is offshore and it is over the top on our network. The real value of what we might have in our data retention scheme would be greatly diminished as soon as the good, organised criminals and potential terrorist cells knew that we were not capturing that data."

Shaw: "Regrettably, not all the intelligence rests on the good side of the equation. There are some smart people out there who want to do bad things and they will, invariably, find ways to utilise technology for their benefit."

Matthew Lobb, general manager, industry strategy and public policy: "First, it would be very expensive to set it up and, second, it would start to become quite problematic information for us to be able to protect and store. So, from a principles point of view, what we would suggest is that we look at what is the minimum useful new storage requirement that emulates the current call storage arrangement. That might simplify resolving this issue."