SPEERS: OK, well, the Prime Minister said today that it’s not what you’re doing on the internet, it’s the sites you’re visiting. So will it be the sites you’re visiting?

BRANDIS: Well it, it wouldn’t extend to for example websurfing. So what, what people are viewing on the internet, um, is not going to be caught.

SPEERS: So it’s not the sites you’re visiting?

BRANDIS: Well, um, what people are viewing on the internet when they websurf is not going to be caught.  What will be caught is the, um, is is is the, is the, um web address they communicate to.

SPEERS: OK, so it’s only, oh, sorry, if I go to an internet site, that will be recorded and available?

BRANDIS: The, the, the web address, um, will, is, is part of the metadata.

SPEERS: The website.

BRANDIS: The web—well, the web address. The, the electronic address of, of the website.

SPEERS: OK, but if I go to the Sky News website, The Australian website, ah, a more questionable website, that will be, is that what we’re talking about here?

BRANDIS: Well, I, the, my, my, my, the, what you’re viewing on the internet is not what we’re interested in, and that’s not what we regard—

SPEERS: But you’ll be able to see whether I’ve been to that website, or that website, or that website.

BRANDIS: Well, what we’ll be able, what the security agencies want to know, to be retained, is the w—is the electronic address of the website that the web user is visiting.

SPEERS: So it does tell you the website.

BRANDIS: Well, it, it, it tells you the address of the website.

SPEERS: That’s the website isn’t it?  It tells you the, what website you’ve been to.

BRANDIS: Well, when you visit a website you, you know, people, you know, browse from one thing to the next, and, and, and that browsing history won’t be retained or, or, or there won’t be any capacity to access  that.

SPEERS: Excuse my confusion here, but if you, you are retaining the web address—

BRANDIS: Mm.

SPEERS: —you are retaining the web site, aren’t you?

BRANDIS: Well, the, every website has an electronic address, right?

SPEERS: Yep, and that’s recorded.

BRANDIS: And whether there’s a connect—or, when a connection is made between, ah, one computer terminal and a web, ah, address, that fact and the time of the, ah, the connection, and the duration of the connection, is what we mean by metadata in that context.

SPEERS: But that is telling you where I’ve been on the web.

BRANDIS: Well, it it it it it it, it it records what web, ah, what electronic web address has been accessed.

SPEERS: I don’t see the difference between that and what websites I’ve visited.

BRANDIS: Well, when you go to a website, it, commonly, ah, you will go from one web page to another, from one link to another—

SPEERS: Yeah.

BRANDIS: —within that website, we’re not, that’s not what we’re interested in.

SPEERS: Oh, okay, the overarching—so if I go to the Sky News website, it’ll tell that, but not necessarily the links within that that I go to.

BRANDIS: Yes.

SPEERS: OK.