A Facebook data capture story posted on Facebook by a friend is not as hilarious as it first appears as so much law in Australia is imported from overseas, especially from Britain and the US.

The story contains some devastating inconsistencies.

The government is "is considering making ... sites [like Facebook and MySpace] keep data about their users' movements". On the other hand the government "was not seeking the power to examine the content of messages sent via the sites".

Strange.

Surely if the data was to be collected and stored in some sort of dark satanic data centre it would be prudent to allow law enforcement authorities access to it. And if this did happen (by some odd convergence of conflicting priorities) then said data would, at some point, be examined.

The "data about users' movements" would presumably include text, which would have to be read by a human. It would therefore be examined by a human. QED.

Lawmakers are keeping busy. They are also intent on collecting the content of every telephone call and email sent by everyone living in Britain.

That means you, Kim :)

Sure, data exchange mechanisms have changed the way we talk to one another and the police are struggling to keep up. It's only a matter of time before commercial TV catches up with reality and uses Facebook in a police drama.

But a storage facility for all Facebook exchanges is just as bad, if not worse, than Facebook's recently-retired terms of service.

In the bigger scheme of things, that is.