The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) will send a letter of complaint to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the Australian Federal Police's attempt to access Guardian Australia journalist Paul Farrell’s telecommunications data and email records.
The AFP has admitted to the privacy commissioner that it had sought 'subscriber checks' and email records relating to Mr Farrell's confidential sources, .
A subscriber check is a request to telecommunications companies for access to information they hold on a particular person, which can be made under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979.
MEAA CEO Paul Murphy said this constituted an attack on press freedom.
“Journalists writing legitimate news stories in the public interest now have police trawling through their private metadata all because a government agency is embarrassed about a leak,” Mr Murphy said in a .
“In the process, the rights of journalists are trampled on.”
Mr Farrell, who covers national security and policing for Guardian Australia, said on social media the AFP’s actions were an “outrageous invasion" of his privacy and a "gross interference with press freedom in Australia”.
Earlier in the year, Mr Farrell's request to obtain a 200-page AFP file was granted, and the contents included information the AFP had amassed in relation to a about an Australian vessel's incursion into Indonesian waters.
Information about the AFP's subscriber check came to Mr Farrell's attention only after he lodged a complaint under the Privacy Act to gain access to parts of the AFP files that had been redacted.
The AFP would not comment on whether the journalist’s privacy had been breached, but an AFP spokesman told the Guardian: “The provisions of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (TIA Act) strictly regulate the disclosure of information."
“Outside of specific exceptions, none of which apply in these circumstances, it may constitute an offence under the TIA Act for the AFP to provide information in answer to these queries," the AFP spokesman said.
Mr Murphy said this case was an example of how Australia's press freedom had been eroded over recent years, and that Australia had "fallen from being a bastion of press freedom".
"All to stop government agencies from facing proper scrutiny from the community they serve," he said.
Mr Murphy said the MEAA would also write to Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield over the issue.
