Telstra signed a secret agreement a decade ago with US Government agencies such as the FBI and the Department of Justice that provided American law enforcement and national security organisations with an extremely broad level of access to all of the telco’s telecommunications passing in and out of the US, it was revealed late last week.

On Friday independent media outlet Crikey published what what appeared to be the text of the agreement. It notes that it was signed in November 2001 between Telstra and its Hong Kong partner telco PCCW, and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice.

The document cites principles such as the US Government’s need to preserve the national security of the US and to ensure that US communications were secure in order to protect the privacy of US persons. It notes that the stimulus for the agreement to be signed was the application of Telstra/PCCW submarine cable joint venture Reach — which operates major underwater fibre links between a number of Asian countries, as well as Australia and the US — to provide telecommunications services from the US back in 2001, shortly after it was formed by Telstra and PCCW.

The agreement states that all telcos operating in the US must maintain facilities that were compliant with US law enforcement regulations in that country, such as the ability to hand over details, including calling data but not the content of communications, of all communications received or which originated in the US.

Data to be stored by Reach for two years included identifying information relating to telephone calls, such as telephone numbers, Internet addressed used, the time, date, size and duration of a communication, any information relating specifically to the identity and physical address of those communicating, and a host of other information, especially billing records, which typically show details of all telephone calls made by telephone service subscribers — via redwolf.newsvine.com